14 DAY TRIAL // iPhone’s growth stalled in the first quarter of fiscal year 2016, and Apple now expects a drop for the next quarter, but the company is still seeing some positive numbers regarding its flagship product.
The company’s CEO Tim Cook revealed in the conference call with investors following the financial report that he was “blown away” by the number of users who switched from Android to iOS, explaining that, last quarter, Apple recorded the biggest adoption rate in this regard.
“I would say we were blown away by the level of Android switchers that we had last quarter. It was the highest ever by far. And so we see that as a huge opportunity,” Cook explained.
To boost migration from Android devices to the iPhone, Apple launched an app called “Move to iOS,” which automatically transfers information such as contacts, message history, camera photos and videos, web bookmarks, mail accounts, calendars, and some free apps. This way, the switch from Android to iOS is made faster and with fewer manual steps required from the user.
iPhone sales decline next quarter
But despite all these efforts, Tim Cook says Apple expects a decline in iPhone sales for the next quarter, but he refused to provide any estimates.
Asked whether this decline could be somewhere around 15 to 20 percent, Tim Cook replied that Apple forecasted a smaller drop, but once again, no specifics were provided.
“We don't think that they will decline to the levels that you're talking about. We aren't projecting beyond the quarter. But at this point in time, we see that Q2 is the toughest compare. We don't spend a lot of time on predicting. Our view has always been that if we do - if we make a great product and have a great experience that we ought to be able to convince enough people to move over,” he said.
In Q1 FY2016, Apple sold a total of 74.8 million iPhone units, only a slight improvement over the 74.4 million units sold in the same quarter of the previous year.