[Leaked image of iPhone7 prototype]
KGI securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a variety of reliable Apple related news sources, foresaw that iPhone 7, which is scheduled for release in September, will not be the game changer.
Apple recently released iPhone SE, a four-inch smartphone, but sales are not as high as the company hoped it would be. Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple's iPhone shipments will drop even further with the release of iPhone7 because it lacks "attractive selling points".
Ming-Chi Kuo had reported that the new iPhone7 is expected to adopt a largely glass composition, similar to iPhone 4 and 4S, but Ming-Chi Kuo does not believe it would reel in the consumers. Instead, he expects a significant drop in iPhone sales for this year.
According to research results from KGI, Apple was the only company to record decline in smartphones among the top five smartphone brands – Samsung, Apple, Huawei, OPPO, and Vivo.
The analyst suggests that Apple will ship 205 million iPhones, which is almost 12 percent drop from last year. Worst case scenario expected by Kuo is that Apple's shipments in 2016 will be 190 million.
아주경제 박세진 기자 = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
