Kulbinder Garcha, one of the company’s analysts, was sufficiently confident about the iPhone 8’s performance to predict sales of 250 million units in fiscal 2018, compared to 215 million units projected in 2017 for the iPhone 7.
One analyst, Andrew Uerkwitz, has predicted that the 2017 iPhone refresh will be the company’s last growth hurrah, before spiraling into a decade-long malaise as the market turns increasingly to lower-cost and second-hand phones.
Incidentally, Donald Trump spent much of his recent presidential campaign complaining about Apple and its offshore manufacturing operations and promising he would make the company build its iPhones in the US.
Trump claimed to have spoken on the phone with Apple CEO Tim Cook and reached what sounded like a degree of understanding that one might not expect from two men with such different temperaments and political leanings.
The new US President said that it would really be a big achievement for him when he gets to convince Apple to build a big plant in the US instead of going to China, to Taiwan, or to India to build iPhones.
Apple has its reasons for building its smartphones in Asia and the obvious issue is labor cost and the shortage of relevant skills in the US. Moving manufacturing to America would cost Apple a lot of money. But Trump thinks he can sweeten the deal with tax cuts and changes to regulations.