The iPhone could generate nearly half of Apple’s revenue by calendar 2013, with the tech giant forecasted to sell 143 million smartphones and 68 million iPads, according to a high-profile analyst Wednesday.
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster expects the iPhone will represent 49 percent of Apple’s $164 billion revenue for 2013, the handset’s growth slowing only slightly to 29 percent, down from 30 percent expected in 2012. Munster also threw water on speculation Apple will introduce a contract-free low-cost iPhone to compete with less expensive Android-based smartphones.
Instead, Apple will maintain a relatively steady average selling price for the iPhone, falling from $603 in 2012 to $565 in calendar 2013. “In other words, we do not believe Apple needs an ultra low end offering to grow iPhone units at 30 percent,” he told investors. If the Cupertino, Calif. company were to introduce a prepaid iPhone for under $200, “our unit estimates would be too low and our ASPs would be too high.”
Apple will also continue double-digit growth rates for its wildly popular iPad tablet, according to the analyst. He predicts the iPad will be 21 percent of Apple’s 2013 revenue, with sales of 68 million units. As in the iPhone’s, case, iPad sales growth will decline slightly, falling to 35 percent in calendar 2013, down from 39 percent in 2012. The tablet’s average selling price will slide from $575 to $555, according to Munster.
As we see the continued growth of iPhone and iPad sales and their increasing importance to Apple’s bottom-line, Mac sales are following an opposite trend-line. Growth of Macs sales will fall to 15 percent in 2013, down from 17 percent expected in 2012. The Mac line will represent 16 percent of Apple revenue on sales of 23 million units two years from now, the analyst expects. As the Mac’s importance falters, Apple will drop the average selling price to $1,175 in 2013, down from $1,257 forecast for 2012.
Although growth seems to be slowing from Apple’s products, it appears to be ahead of PC manufacturers, who are hard pressed to push demand for devices which must compete against Cupertino.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
12 responses to “By 2013, The iPhone Will Generate Almost Half of Apple’s Revenue… Without An iPhone Nano”
This would be true if Apple wasn’t about to explode all over the Asain market. China is going to be huge and will likely surpass US sales by 2013. They have a vastly different cellular buying structure than we do in the states. Granted I disagree on the iPhone Nano rumors and think Apple will just push the “last” gen model at competitive off contract prices… but time will tell.
The problem is that Apple is going to post these number in 2012 (and then some). All you have to do is take Apple’s numbers over the last five years and apply the averages. As the good Friar posted below, Apple is going to explode in the Asian market this coming year.
So yeah, these numbers are correct but they are correct for 2012, not 2013.
Just like Apple didn’t make a netbook, they won’t make an iPhone nano. Stupid idea.
iphone nano.. would be sweet.. look at the phone market apple..
No kidding. The ‘iPhone Nano’ is the last generation of iPhone. iPhone 3GS sales prove it.
It’s sad to see such an innovative computer company switch
to mainly manufacturing appliances.