Santa didn’t deliver as many iPhones as Apple shareholders would’ve liked this year.
That’s according to Sinolink Securities analyst Zhang Bin, who said in a Monday note to clients Apple might sell “only” 35 million iPhones in its first quarter of next year — which would come in nearly 12 million devices below Q4 shipments. In his note picked up by Bloomberg, Bin pointed to iPhone X’s $999 price tag as a reason for diminishing sales.
“After the first wave of demand has been fulfilled, the market now worries that the high price of the iPhone X may weaken demand in the first quarter,” said Bin.
It wasn’t just the Chinese firm forecasting a rough holiday season for Apple, either. U.S.-based JL Warren Capital is pegging sales at 25 million devices for the quarter, according to CNBC, with the firm saying iPhone X’s “high price point and a lack of interesting innovations” will do little to drive adoption. (Apparently the iPhone X’s facial recognition software, animated emojis, and its augmented reality-enabled apps aren’t exciting to JL Warren.)
The lowered expectations have spooked Wall Street on Tuesday, with shares of Apple trading down more than 2.5 percent to about $170.50. Still, even with the hit, the world’s biggest tech company has been on a strong run in 2017; shares of AAPL have jumped 47 percent since last Christmas.