Apple sold fewer than 500,000 iPhones in China last month amid the ongoing curbs on travel and transport, according to government data shared on Monday (via Reuters).
Shipments of Apple devices slumped to 494,000, from 1.27 million in February 2019. In January, their shipments had held steady at just over 2 million.
That amounts to an almost 60 percent slump in iPhone sales – worse than IDC's forecasted drop in overall smartphone sales of roughly 40 percent in the first quarter due to the impact of coronavirus.
China's restrictions on public movement were enforced in late January just ahead of the Lunar New Year Festival and remained in place throughout most of February, which appears to have crippled demand for smartphones.
According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, mobile phone brands shipped a total of 6.34 million devices in February, down 55 percent from 14 million sold in February 2019.
Android brands like Huawei and Xiaomi suffered the worst, with shipments collectively declining from 12.72 million units in February 2019 to 5.85 million.
Apple closed all 42 of its retail stores in China at the beginning of February as the outbreak in China worsened, but most of the stores have re-opened, albeit operating with shortened hours. New infections and deaths reported in China have been declining in recent weeks, according to government data, suggesting the virus may have peaked there.
Apple in mid-February announced that its financial guidance for the March quarter would fall short due to the COVID-19 outbreak. During the January earnings call, Apple said it expected to see revenue of $63 to $67 billion in the March quarter, but that is no longer a goal the company will be able to meet.
Apple cited lower customer demand in China and constrained iPhone supplies worldwide as the factors leading to lower than expected revenue.
Top Rated Comments
People also probably would rather save their money like you said instead of buying any piece of electronics, not just Apple.
I’m sure a lot of industries are being impacted. Not just Apple. Apple will absolutely recover though. There’s not much to worry about IMO.
Based on the current model by the Chief Chinese Scientist on nCov19, the virus cases outside of China will surpass China by mid-April and will reach a peak in June.
The good thing is, China will have enough manufacturing volume on the key components by that time. So, that's good. If they don't place a ban on export to the US, which Trump may be less than pleased ironically.
A Biomed Lab in Shanghai just created a vaccine, the scientist who created it tried it on himself already lol... It's been quite effective when trialled on lab rats and monkeys/primates. It's been evaluated for clinical trials. So far, it's the only vaccine on the planet that has been used on human and that person didn't die and yet still seem promising.
So if the congress can help CDC and FDA to get some of that, it can save lots of lives. If we can make them here, it's even better. But, who cares about American bloodsucking big pharms? It's probably in the public interest to directly import ones from China, cheaper and more reliable. The Chinese make 70% of all the active ingredients in all drugs sold in the world outside of China. You can think of active ingredients as "the real drug inside drugs", aka, not cornstarch.