A top Apple insider and analyst has warned the company’s iPhone 16, expected in September of this year, will not feature a significant design change over the previous model, and that 2024 could be a bumpy year for Apple’s smartphones.
Writing in a blog post on Medium, Ming-Chi Kuo says that Apple “has lowered its 2024 iPhone shipments of key upstream semiconductor components to about 200 million units,” down 15% year on year, as it anticipates a challenging 2024 and a “significant decline in shipments."
Kuo says that shipments of both the new iPhone 16 and Apple’s current best iPhone, the iPhone 15, will decline by 10-15% year on year in the first and second halves of 2024 respectively.
A tumultuous 2024 for iPhone
According to Kuo, the iPhone faces “structural challenges that will lead to a significant decline in shipments in 2024” including “the emergence of a new paradigm in high-end mobile phone design and the continued decline in shipments in the Chinese market.” Kuo says “The new high-end mobile phone design paradigm includes AI (GenAI) and foldable phones,” two emerging trends Apple has been notably bearish on in recent years.
Kuo says rivals including Huawei and Samsung will benefit at Apple’s expense, with the former re-emerging in China. Kuo says Apple’s shipments in China are down 30-40% year on year “in recent weeks” owing to Huawei’s resurgence and “the fact that foldable phones have gradually become the first choice for high-end users in the Chinese market.”
While Apple is expected to herald some pretty significant AI innovations through Siri and the iPhone at WWDC later this year, an iPhone fold is nowhere to be seen. As it stands, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro both promise to be muted upgrades, according to the latest rumors and reports.
Kuo says Apple “will not launch new iPhone models with significant design changes and the more comprehensive/differentiated GenAI ecosystem/applications until 2025 at the earliest,” and that Apple’s shipment momentum is likely to falter in the intervening period.
