Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo pointed out in a report to investors: Despite continuous innovation in functionality, Apple’s iPhone shipment growth may experience a slowdown in 2022~2023, which has become a major test the company has to face. Specifically, analysts also predict in the report that the iPhone’s year-on-year growth rate may slow to 5~7% from 16% in 2021, cut in half.
Analysts attribute the 2021 growth rate to the surge in 5G replacement demand and the market vacancies vacated by Huawei. It can be seen that in 2020 and 2021, Apple’s growth rate far exceeds the overall performance of the smartphone market-the latter suffered an overall decline of 8% last year and did not return to a 5% growth until 2021.
Even so, Guo Mingchi lowered his forecast for the iPhone’s year-on-year growth rate in 2022 to 5 to 7%, which is much lower than the 16% growth in 2021. In terms of product planning, analysts predict that Apple will launch a new iPhone equipped with an under-screen fingerprint recognition solution in 2022 and introduce a folding screen product line in 2023, neither of which can offset the impact of factors such as the decline in 5G demand.
In addition, although the iPhone 13’s pre-orders are higher than the iPhone 12 series, analysts are not surprised by this market consensus. Among them, iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro Max accounted for 45-50% of the total shipments, and the delivery time has been delayed to 3 to 5 weeks.
In comparison, the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max released last year accounted for 35-40% of shipments after the release, and the delivery time was 3 to 4 weeks. Unless pre-order demand for iPhone 13 increases further, analysts still do not believe that the new iPhone products in 2021 will contribute much to Apple’s stock price.
The market generally believes that the iPhone 13 shipments in the fourth quarter of this year will be higher than that of the iPhone 12 in the fourth quarter of last year, and the delivery time of the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max models will be within 5-6 weeks.
On the other hand, Guo Mingchi also pointed out that the booking demand for iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini seems to be lower than that of iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini. Fortunately, analysts predict the duration of the shortage of iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max, or slightly shorter than the previous generation models.
Normally, the demand for high-end iPhone models after launch is often higher than that for low-end models, and the supply will reach equilibrium after 6 to 8 weeks. However, last year’s iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max are exceptions. Even if they were released for more than three months, their delivery time is still as long as 2 to 4 weeks, because the shortage of telephoto cameras has greatly dragged down this.
Without avoiding repeating the same mistakes, Apple has increased the supply share of iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max models to a level of 45-50% of the total. If all goes well, analysts expect the supply of the iPhone 13 Pro to be significantly improved in mid-November-when the iPhone shipments in the first quarter of 2022 will be the same as the previous generation or decline.
