Ever since the iPhone 5 came out, it seems like everyone considers Apple a disappointment. The company posted a $13 billion profit during the holiday quarter and its stock still tumbled by $47 billion dollars. Every other story out there seems to discuss Apple's stagnant business and the fact that the iPhone 5 failed to stop the company from trending down against Samsung.
The iPhone 5 isn't up to par, and Apple is facing tough odds against Samsung and Android. It's the conventional wisdom at this point. But should it be?
A new Reuters article continues the trend by reporting the reason is that Hon Hai, a parts manufacturer for Apple as well as other companies, is facing a 19 percent sales decline due to "disappointing demand for the iPhone."
Later in the article, Reuters states that "Disappointing holiday sales reinforced fears it is losing its dominance in smartphones."
There were no hard numbers in the piece, but apparently "A quarterly decline was expected, but not a yearly decline," KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo said. "This shows that Hon Hai's revenue depends too much on Apple, and iPhone orders corrected more than expected."
As Philip Elmer-DeWitt over at CNN Money notes, though, it may be a bit premature to declare iPhone sales disappointing.
"The consensus among the 33 Wall Street analysts we polled in advance of Apple's Q1 2013 earnings call was that the company would sell a record 47.6 million iPhones in the holiday quarter. Apple sold 47.8 million," he wrote. "Since when is beating the Street's consensus a disappointment?"
Hon Hai also makes more than just Apple products. It also makes devices for Dell and HP, and neither company's sales has been very great lately. So far, there's one analyst saying Apple is the problem, so maybe we should wait before jumping to any premature conclusions.
