Apple to Sell up to 75 Million iPhones and 4 Million Watches in Holiday Quarter: KGI

Well-connected KGI Securities Ming-Chi Kou has just released his iPhone and Apple Watch sales forecasts for the holiday quarter. After looking into his crystal ball, Kuo foresees sales of up to 75 million iPhones and up to 4 million Apple Watches during Q4 2015.

In a research note obtained by MacRumos, Kuo reinforces his earlier forecast of zero to negative growth of iPhone sales for Q4 2015 and Q1 2016. As for the past quarter, Kuo predicts strong sales, with 23.6% year-over-year and 2.1% quarter-over-quarter growth.

We estimate iPhone shipments rose 2.1% QoQ and 23.6% YoY to 48.5mn units in 3Q15, of which 20-22mn units were iPhone 6s. We attribute the solid YoY growth to the inclusion of China as the first-launch market for iPhone 6s and to increased output of the new model (versus 14-15mn units of iPhone 6 in 3Q14).

However, as we do not expect overall demand for iPhone 6s to be significantly stronger than that for iPhone 6, we expect shipments momentum could gradually decline in 4Q15-1Q16F on a YoY basis. We expect iPhone may see its first YoY shipments decline in the first quarter of a year in 2016.

As for the iPad, Kuo predicts sales of 14.5–15.5 million units and up to 5.6 million Mac shipments for this quarter. Since the iPad Pro will launch in November, Kuo expects sales of roughly 2 million units during the same time frame and believes that its high price will help offset an annual decline of iPad shipments, which are predicted to drop 16% to 40–42 million units next year.

In the light of the above, Kuo says Mac sales will outpace competing PC peers, with the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro being the most popular notebook, followed by the 12-inch MacBook. The new iMacs will also account for about half of total iMac shipments by the end of this year, according to the analyst.