They’ll be selling iPhones in Milan

Apple’s iPhone probably accounts for over 50 percent of smartphone sales across the Big Four U.S. mobile carriers, claims Canaccord Genuity analyst, Michael Walkley in a note to clients released today.

‘iPhone sales resilient’

The analyst points to Apple’s continued high customer satisfaction scores and predicts Apple will continue to grow its share of the smartphone market, and will likely see YoY unit sales growth in the next year on the basis of slightly cheaper iPhones.

Apple has resisted the Android Menace. “In fact, new Android smartphone launches in 2018 have had limited impact to overall iPhone market share in North America based on our surveys,” the analyst said, observing that iPhone users tend to stick with their platform.

The result? Expect Apple to sell 222-227 million or more iPhones in 2018-19, rising to 238 million sales in 2020. The company is expected to maintain share at the high end of the market, but to take more share from the middle of the market on strength of slightly cheaper iPhone models.

“We now anticipate 26.9 percent of the 635 million iPhone user base exiting 2017 will purchase a new iPhone during 2018,” the analysts say, warning this may prove to be a conservative assessment.

https://youtu.be/4YY3MSaUqMg

Service adoption booms

Services also look promising. The analyst predicts the iPhone installed user base will exceed 700 million active devices this year, driving strong replacement sales and services income across the next year.

The analyst’s say they expect services revenues to climb 25-30% in the next year, pointing out that growth could be higher on account of the additional services Apple is thought to be developing.

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One more thing

It is striking when looking at the data in the note to reflect on how much the smartphone market has changed in the last four years. Beyond Apple and Samsung, in 2013 the biggest smartphone brands included Lenovo (post Motorola, 6.2%), Huawei (5.3%), LG (4.8%), ZTE (4.1%) and Sony (3.9%).

Fast forward to 2017, and the biggest names include Huawei (10.2%), OPPO (7.7%), VIVO (7.1%), ZTE (4.4%) and LG at 3.7%. Apple’s share has remained relatively stable, but Samsung has seen its slice decline from 31.4 percent to 21 percent, which is where competing Android device makers are grabbing market share from.

Canaccord Genuity rates Apple a ‘Buy’ with a $250 price target.