Morgan Stanley says iPhone 13 sees strong weekend demand

The analysts at Morgan Stanley believe the iPhone 13 has experienced strong first weekend demand, calling this a “promising start” with a lot of positive supporting data.

Potentially sales up 20%

In a client note received by AppleMust, a team of analysts including Katy Huberty state: “While it’s still very early days, the combination of long early iPhone 13 lead times and 2H CY21 iPhone builds that are up 20% Y/Y (with new model builds of 87M units, the strongest since 2H CY17) show the iPhone 13 is off to a promising start.”

iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone Pro Max lead times are the second strongest in the last 5 years as of the first pre-order date, while 2H CY21 iPhone builds point to 20% Y/Y growth, suggesting strong growth in sales this year. According to the note, lead times were 27.5 days for the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, 3.1 days for the iPhone 13 mini, and 0 days for the iPhone 13. The analysts also cite minimal near term component problems.

Big demand in China

They also cite data from JD.com as reported by the South China Morning Post. This report claimed Chinese consumers placed over 2M pre-orders for the iPhone 13 series on Thursday, September 16th, which is higher than the 1.5million orders placed for the iPhone 12 last year.

That report also claimed queues of up to 60 people were waiting to speak to iPhone 13 customer advisors on launch.

[Also read: Benchmarks say iPhone Pro 13 is the world’s fastest phone]

The analysts continue to anticipate App Store performance will be up 12.2% year on year, and point out that recent changes to the bus9ienss model there won’t come into effect until the next quarter.

Huberty last week said:

“Should early reports indicate elevated iPhone demand vs. low buy-side expectations, we’d expect Apple shares to outperform in the near-term,” she said, “Especially given the iPhone’s stronger inventory/supply chain positioning vs. smartphone peers.”

Apple’s ‘incredible momentum’

She was one of numerous analysts to anticipate strong demand for the device.

Ben Wood, Chief Analyst, CCS Insight said: “Apple has a proven and profitable approach that it appears capable of sustaining for a long time. Only a major industry disruption, such as a dramatic shift to flexible devices, which is far from certain at present, would force it to radically deviate from this strategy.

“Much to the dismay of its rivals, there is little reason to indicate Apple is not on course to continue its incredible momentum into 2022.”

Apple no longer breaks out its unit sales data but perhaps we shall learn more during the next fiscal call.

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