The fact that iPhone sales were down in the first three months of the year is no secret, but new information shows that the decline wasn’t isolated to one or two areas. No, Apple admitted that iOS handset sales dropped in every region of the world.
Deep in Apple’s most recent Form 10-Q filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the note: “iPhone net sales decreased during the second quarter and first six months of 2019 compared to the same periods in 2018 due primarily to lower iPhone unit sales in all the reportable geographic segments.”
Note that the company’s financial year begins in October, so it finished Q2 2019 at the end of March.
Apple breaks the world up into six regions: the Americas, Europe, Greater China, Japan, and the rest of Asia Pacific. And now we know that there was lower demand for Apple’s signature product in all of them.
The company also experienced slow iPhone sales in the last three months of 2018, but executives at that time said it was primarily a result of weak demand in China. In this most quarter, the slowdown in sales was more universal.
iPhones sales estimates
Apple no longer announces how many iPhone units it ships each quarter, but analysts have made this estimates.
Canalys says the company shipped 40.2 million units in the January-March period, and Counterpoint Research went a bit higher: 42 million units. Those represent a 23 percent and 20 percent drop, respectively. IDC was a significant outlier, estimating just 36.4 million iPhones shipped last quarter.