There’s no secret that iPhones are one of Apple‘s biggest revenue sources, as the technology giant announced that during Q4 2015 – or the holiday season – they managed to sell 74.8 million smartphones. For any other company, this would be a huge success, but the Cupertino-based company is still not happy with this number.
Even Apple can have a bad day. Or year
According to Mashable, this translates to a year-over-year growth of just 0.4%, becoming Apple‘s slowest increase since 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone. And this could be just the start of something even worse, as Apple is expecting the sales to fall even more, reaching $50-53 billion in Q1 2016, compared to the same period of 2015, when they reached $58 billion.
Still, despite this, CEO Tim Cook admitted to have discovered a soft point in Apple‘s strategy. It’s well known that China is looking forward to grow and it can play a key role in the upcoming future, so the company should focus more on this specific market.
China, one of the main targets
“We began to see some signs of economic softness in Greater China earlier this month, most notably in Hong Kong,” Mr. Cook said during a call with analysts. But, he added later, “We remain very bullish on China and don’t subscribe to the doom and gloom predictions frankly.”
Also, during the same call, the Apple CEO also mentioned a couple of countries, like Brazil, Russia, Japan and Canada, which are all facing “slowing economic growth”, pledging to invest throughout the economic downturn and avoid “retrenching”, says the above-mentioned source.
Apple is aware of the dark time they could deal with, so it’s constantly searching for a new revenue source, like smartwatches or tablets, but smartphones will remain the main money makers. Also, if the new, compact, iPhone 5se will be launched soon, they might avoid another bad year, from a financial point of view.
