Investors are holding their breaths till Tuesday afternoon, when Apple is expected to announce its sales and profits for the last quarter. It will not, however, be a joyous occasion as its sales and profits both declined rapidly during the last quarter, a rare occurrence for a multinational company that has so far been growing rapidly each year and has become the largest company on earth in the technology field. The last time this had occurred was in 2003, when the PowerMac was still the company’s best seller and 611,000 iPods had been sold even though Apple had yet to launch the iTunes Music Store.
Analysts from Wall Street take another step into the realm of the unheard of and predict a double-digit sales loss as well. Apple hasn’t weathered this sort of inglorious melodrama that is unfolding since 2001. This was when Windows 98 was the OS to have and the Apple iPod hadn’t even been invented yet. The tides of Time have not been as favourable to Apple, or to the iPod, as one would have predicted. A large two-thirds of the revenue Apple enjoys is from the iPhone sales department and it only makes sense that if the iPhone sales go down, so does Apple and the last quarter is an exact example for the miserable failure that was Apple’s signature gadget.
According to Tim Cook who made the prediction back in January, the rapid decrease in the sale of iPhones, that too for the first time in Apple’s history, could be chalked down to an extremely good run a year earlier, with the release of the iPhone 5 and 5S. The thing with great successes is that they are generally difficult to follow up and even more difficult to top and furthermore, the ecomonic demand for phones is very different now when compares to 2015. Apple analysts predict the first quarter of 2016 should see Apple sales flat lining and are placing their hopes on the iPhone 7 to reboot Apple’s sales growth
Against sales reports from the same sales quarters of 2015 and 2016, iPhones have seen a drop in sales of 18% and Cook states that he believes most iPhone customers are leery of upgrading their phones to the 6 or 6S versions. The iPad has fallen by 20% and are expected to fall further. Mac and its subsidiary Macbook have flatlined at 4.6 million each year, even though there is an increasingly interested market in new laptops.
Cash is literally flooding into emerging markets. In just the last two months, billions of dollars has been invested in this new marketing niche. With the MSCI stock market up by 5.5% this year in the European and US markets, now is an excellent time to be investing in emerging market stocks. Stock markets in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Russia are up by over 10% so far this year and are expected to see further growth later down the financial road. Experts say the interest in these markets is a fire being fueled by small but important changes in the economy.