Apple, BlackBerry, Nokia slip on latest data
Forecast from IDC sees sharp slowdown in smartphone sales growth
new
March 4, 2013, 12:08 p.m. EST
By Dan Gallagher, MarketWatch
V. Phani Kumar
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Smartphone makers Apple Inc., BlackBerry
Inc. and Nokia Corp. all saw their share prices slip on Monday after
brokers expressed various points of concern about near-term sales of
those companies’ key devices.
Apple shares
AAPL
-2.02%
fell 1.3% to $422.86 after Cowen & Co. predicted a later launch for
the company’s next iPhone that is expected to be geared for the Chinese
market. BlackBerry shares
BBRY
-1.51%
were down 1.2% to $13.09, while Nokia’s U.S.-listed shares
NOK
-2.23%
fell nearly 3% after other analysts issued downbeat forecasts for those companies’ newest handsets.
The action also came after IDC issued a forecast that projected global
smartphone shipments will hit 918.6 million units this year. While that
is up 29% from the firm’s shipment totals from 2012, it is a far slower
annual growth rate than the 44% seen by the industry in the prior year.
“Now that smartphone users constitute the majority of all mobile phone
users in the United States, IDC expects slower growth in the years
ahead,” the firm said in its report.
China is expected to be the top market for smartphone shipments this
year, comprising about 33% of total global shipments, IDC predicted.
However, lower-cost handsets are expected to comprise a larger chunk of
that business when compared to developed markets like North America.
“Also, smartphone prices are expected to fall amid increased competition,” IDC wrote.
Apple, which took a sharp hit on Friday after a federal judge reduced
the size of a verdict the company won against rival Samsung
KR:005930
-0.32%
in a patent dispute, is looking to China as a key market to drive sales of its iPhone this year.
But Matthew Hoffman of Cowen & Co. wrote on Monday that he now
expects a launch for the next iPhone — which many believe will be called
the iPhone 5S — in the September quarter rather than the June period.
This iPhone is expected to include 3G TD-SCDMA technology that would
allow it to operate on the network’s of China Mobile — the country’s
largest mobile carrier.
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“We are trimming our Apple estimates given that a ‘5S’ launch now appears to have slipped into [fiscal Q413],” Hoffman wrote.
For BlackBerry, Canaccord analyst Mike Walkley cited his latest surveys
indicating “mixed initial sales” for the newly launched Z10 smartphone,
which is now available in the U.K. Canada, France, Germany and India. A
U.S. launch for the handset is expected sometime this month.
“With new BlackBerry 10 smartphones launching in the U.S. only in
mid-March or later at subsidized prices no better than competing
high-end Apple/Samsung smartphones, combined with our expectations for
the Galaxy S IV to launch at a similar time frame in the U.S. market, we
anticipate BlackBerry will struggle to reclaim high-end smartphone
market share,” Walkley wrote.
Nokia shares slipped after Bernstein Research issued a report predicting
weaker sales for the Lumia 920 — the flagship phone for the Windows
Phone 8 operating system that the company launched last fall.
Analyst Pierre Ferragu cited a “steep fall” in Google searches for the
Lumia 920 as an indicator that “consumer interest has already flagged
and now stands at very similar levels to the Lumia 800 last year and the
Nokia N8 in 2011.”
Dan Gallagher is MarketWatch's technology editor, based in San Francisco. Follow him on Twitter @MWDanGallagher.
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