Paul Morris·

KGI: Reports Of Poor iPhone 8 Sales Greatly Exaggerated

It happens every single year. Whenever a company like Apple releases a new smartphone, which in this instance is iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, the general reporting stance is that sales have been disappointing and that there’s much hype about nothing.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo doesn’t believe the iPhone 8 sales doom and gloom is required, suggesting that reports so far have been “excessively negative” and that device sales were actually very stable.

As always, Kuo has pushed out a note to investors clarifying thoughts on the initial sales weekend as well as his company’s belief that Apple will see roughly equal sales split between iPhone 8 and iPhone X.

We previously estimated the production weighting of new 2017 iPhone models at roughly 50% iPhone X and 50% iPhone 8/ 8 Plus. This matches what we believe is Apple’s (U.S.) estimate for demand. At first glance, the combined first-week adoption rate for the iPhone 8/ 8 Plus might appear low (about half that of iPhone 6s/ 6s Plus and 7/ 7 Plus). However, this is due to the fact that the iPhone X is not included, not because iPhone 8/ 8 Plus first weekend sales have been weak.

A lot of the negativity around the belief of poor iPhone 8 sales has been driven by the fact that there doesn’t appear to be as many hardcore Apple fans queuing up religiously for hours on end outside of Apple Stores around the world. With that said, we could simply be in a position where those individuals who enjoy the annual pilgrimage to form a camping queue out of a local Apple Store are simply waiting for iPhone X to arrive in a few weeks time.

A day earlier, a report from Localytics suggested that the weekend sales of the iPhone 8 range were the slowest of any iPhone since 2013, but interestingly it also saw the adoption rate of the larger 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus to be the highest amongst any Plus-model till date.

It’s certainly not all doom and gloom for Apple. The well-placed KGI analyst believes that sales have been good for Apple where iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are concerned – with it being reported that more consumers are actually opting for 8 Plus – and expects 40-50 million iPhone X pre-orders to go through Apple’s servers when that device is released for sale.

You only need to take the price of the handset and multiply it by those numbers to know that would be a huge success for the company.

(Via: MacRumors)

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