Apple’s iPhone sales declined 17% in the first three months of the year as the company’s flagship phones are struggling to sell, so the question comes why is this happening:
Apple for the first time reported a decline in sales after over a decade and struggling to sell iPhones. iPhones are getting expensive and now out of reach from people from emerging markets such as India also If you see the recent trend Apple is not aggressive in innovation as it used to be (around 2010-11 and thanks to Steve Jobs). The Companies such as Samsung, Huawei, LG are investing a lot in Research and Development (RnD) and trends such as punch hole/notch displays, high-resolution display, high speed wired and wireless charging, better camera sensors, universal I/O ports (USB C) are adopted by all these companies, wherein Apple is still using outdated technologies (not in all cases).
For the last two generations, the design has not changed and Apple is still selling the outdated design such as iPhone 7, wherein if you see Samsung, Huawei, etc. they are using better design language also they redesign it frequently. These phones with better specifications are cheaper than iPhones.
The main thing which is contributing to the this is the Google’s Android, which has improved a lot over the years and it is now providing an optimized software which utilized the capacity of its hardware (Apple does that too), but with better value (Oneplus is sold at around $ 530 USD, wherein you get iPhone Xs starting at $999).
One major issue is the ‘markets’ where Apple is not able to penetrate such as India, Srilanka or Asian Markets where the customer is price sensitive and go for better value rather than the brand and this shows in Oneplus brand value in India. Oneplus has come to the premium mobile brand segment in India, because of the better product value delivery.
Apple has sensed the issue and stopped reporting unit sales of iPhones, also to recover losses Apple is planning to start a lot of subscription-based services such as Apple TV+. If you consider the IOS operating system, there is no innovation or even significant change for past 3-4 years (after IOS 6 there is no redesign). Apple used to launch features in buckets earlier and it was working in favour of Apple because other brands were struggling with the hardware and software optimization but now those brands have figured out a way and Apple is still using the old strategy of launching features in buckets (slowly over the years).
Companies such as Samsung, Oneplus changing very quickly and trying to provide best in the market, they are becoming aggressive and for this, they are not charging a lot like Apple. Apple should change quickly else customer base will reduce drastically.
Apple recently started manufacturing iPhone 7 and X in India thinking that people will buy cheap phones in India but these price sensitive markets are becoming tech-savvy and opt for better value and technology rather than just brand, wherein other companies are quickly capturing these markets (China and India are some of the biggest mobile phone markets in the world).
Apple has to change quickly to improve their sales. Let me know your opinion in the comment section, Thanks for reading the article, Cheers 🙂