Apple Inc.’s third quarter revenue fell short of Wall Street’s projections as iPhone sales begin to falter. Investors are beginning to hesitate as Apple loses stature in the mobile industry.
Company shares fell 10% to $463 from $514, bringing the market value down by $50 billion.
This past week, Apple said it shipped a 47.8 million iPhones, a company record, during the December quarter. Though the figure was 29% higher than last year, analysts had predicted 50 million shipments for that period.
Shaw Wu analyst Sterne Agee said: “It’s going to call into question Apple’s dominance in the space. It’s still one of the strong players, the others being Samsung and Google. It’s still a two-race, but Android continues to grow rapidly.
“If you step back a bit, it’s clear they shipped a lot of phones. But the problem is the high expectations that investors have. Apple’s conservative guidance highlights the concerns over production cuts coming out of Asia recently.”
This is certainly the case for Apple, which predicted revenue of $41- $43 billion for the current quarter, while analysts marked their expectations at $45 billion.