The Whole World Could Do With an Early iPhone
Apple’s iconic smartphone is a powerful symbol, and solid sales numbers might give the global economy a morale boost.
Apple CEO Tim Cook and a display of MacBook Air laptops during a developers conference in June in Cupertino, California.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergOn the surface, it’s just a smartphone — little more than a very slick, rather pricey, well-built gadget. But the iPhone is much more than that, and this year the world could do with having one released just a little earlier than usual.
That’s because the global smartphone market is in a funk, with shipments dropping 9% in the June quarter. Xiaomi Corp., the world’s third-largest player, recently reported a 30% slump in revenue from handsets. Larger rival Samsung Electronics Co. was the only top-five name to increase sales volume during the period, but that was largely due to a particularly bad year-earlier period when Covid lockdowns hit production in Vietnam, according to Counterpoint Research. Even Apple Inc. posted a decline in unit sales for the June quarter.1
And the current outlook doesn’t look promising. “Geopolitical volatility and economic uncertainties” were the reasons Samsung gave recently for a very muted second-half forecast.