It seems that the doom-and-gloom scenario for the decline in sales is because the market for smartphones has ended up in a saturated situation at the moment, and to expand one’s services over in China is deemed to be inadequate in order to continue maintaining the company’s growth pattern.
Apple announced that their revenue in the first quarter of the year will most likely fall in the region of $50 billion to $53 billion, which would mark the first quarterly drop since 2003 – and a couple of billion less than analysts’ estimates of $55.5 billion. Of course, there were signs before that such as the last holiday quarter that saw a drop in overall sales and iPhone shipments compared to what was predicted. The stock of Apple itself dropped by 20% in value within the past half year alone in order to reflect investors’ sentiments.