Det er svært ved at vurdere potentialet for Apples nyeste produkter. Umiddelbart tænker jeg, at især den nye I-phone 6 med den større skærm vil være for dyr for mange. Omvendt har brandet gang på gang gjort skeptikerne til skamme. I den sammenhæng mener Tim Cox i sin analyse på Seeking Alfa, at analytikere og investorer gør klogt ikke at undervurdere den stigende markedsandel Apple har i Asien:
"Asian Growth Sends Strong bull Message For Apple
Sep. 12, 2014 11:03 PM E
Disclosure: The author is long AAPL.
Apple iPhone increasing market share in Asia.
Samsung losing ground to Apple and Xiaomei.
Xiaomei gaining ground, but now Apple can fulfill potential faith its large-screen phones.
Analysts have failed to grasp the importance of Asia excluding China and India, which
represents a growing population of 1.8 billion people.
Singapore may be a small country (population about 5.3 million), but recent import figures for mobile phones have wide-ranging ramifications for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the Asian market as a whole.
According to press reports in Singapore, the period April to June shows that Apple's shipments into Singapore increased from 17% of the total market to 34%, at the same time as that of Samsung (OTC:SSNLF) declined from 55% to 30%. Imports from Xiaomei were estimated at between 10% and 20% and cited, along with Huawei, as having increased substantially. This points to an important trend -- that the new wave of lower-cost Chinese phones is hitting Samsung hard, and not negatively impacting Apple. Samsung seems to have been particularly badly hit by the muted reaction to its Galaxy S5 flagship model. The advent of Android One phones is thought likely to have a negative impact on Samsung as well. Elsewhere in Asia, Samsung is also in decline.
In India in the first quarter of the year, figures released by Counterpoint Technology Research show that Samsung's share of the market fell from 33.3% to 25.3%, with Micromax overtaking Samsung as the leading brand. However, IDC Corp. still had Samsung as the market leader in India in the first quarter of the year. Smartphone sales in India are growing at an annual rate of 68%.
In China, Samsung has fallen well behind Xiaomei from its previous No. 1 spot. In contrast, Apple's iPhone sales in China rose 48% in fiscal third quarter.
Singapore is of course a small market, although the figure of a total of 1.05 million phones imported is evidence that in fact a lot of these phones get re-exported to elsewhere in Asia from duty-free Singapore, as it does not make much sense that a population of 5.3 million would buy 4.2 million phones in one year.
The largest single re-export destination from Singapore has historically been Indonesia, though in recent years Hong Kong may have taken the top spot due to commodity rather than merchandise re-exports. Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, has a population of approximately 253 million with a very young demographic, which is expected to bring the number up to 288 million by 2050. Historically, BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY) and Nokia (NYSE:NOK) have been strong in the country, but these figures indicate that Apple is making inroads. The fact that BlackBerry has had such large sales in Indonesia in the past belies the idea that expensive phones won't sell in Asia.
According to a recent GfK Asia report, first quarter 2014 sales of smartphones in S-E Asia grew 43% for the region as a whole, and a startling 68% for Indonesia to reach 7.3 million units. Vietnam sales grew 57% and Thailand sales grew 45%, in both countries partly as a result of the roll-out of 3G services in 2013. As mentioned in Apple's conference call following their recent results, Vietnam is the fastest-growing market in the world for Apple iPhones.
So in purely numeric terms, these figures are a good indicator of the demand for Apple products in Asia as a whole, not just Singapore. With the US being seen as a mature market, and with Europe in long-running economic gloom, Asia is of increasing importance to Apple, as Tim Cook also emphasized at the last conference call. India and China should not be seen as the totality of Asia, a mistake that US-centric analysts often make. A recent IDC report reinforced the thesis that developing markets will see much faster smartphone growth than will mature markets in the developed world, and Asia is the focus of such growth.
Two further issues make these numbers even more startling for Apple's prospects in Asia.
First, there is the popularity of larger-screen mobile phones in the region-partly because Asians like to game on their phones, and partly because of the high incidence of myopia amongst Chinese (there is a 98% myopia rate among the Chinese population in Singapore), and this has been a category that Apple has not previously addressed.
Secondly, there is the fact that everyone knew Apple had new models coming out in September. Yet people were so keen to have the Apple product now that many had not waited for the new iPhone 6 models.
GfK Asia also reported that retail sales in Singapore show that 417,700 tablets were sold in the first half of the year. Again, many of these would have been bought retail for taking back to neighboring countries. Here we see the same trend as elsewhere, as the figure is down about 10% on 2013, though it is expected to show small growth by year-end. At the same time, the market for large-screen phones has increased. The same report stated that in the first six months of the year, 21% of the total phones sold in Singapore (378,000 units) were large-screen phones, an 80% increase on the same figure for 2013.
Figures are not available, but my personal observation is that the market leaders in large-screen phones seem to be the Samsung Galaxy Note, Sony (NYSE:SNE) Xperia and LG Optimus G Pro.
However, Apple is still the preferred aspirational brand in the region, where brand-consciousness is greater than in North America or Europe, so the large-screen iPhone 6 with a choice of 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches should have a huge impact here.
Those who think Apple is too pricey for Asia are mistaken. Based on IMF 2013 figures, Singapore anyway has the third-highest GDP per head of any country in the world at $64,584, and Hong Kong is about on a par with the US at $52,722. On a personal level, even the Filipina lady who comes to clean my apartment has an iPhone 4. What is perhaps surprising is that other countries in the region such as Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia have a potential to provide rich pickings for the iPhone 6. Apart from Asians' love of branded products, this is also helped by the continuing high subsidies of mobile phones by the regions' telecoms companies.
Asia has a population of approximately 4.4 billion, or 1.8 billion, excluding the behemoths of China and India about which analysts spend so much time talking. In Japan, Apple is the market leader, and Asia excluding India and China has twice the population of the US and Europe combined, and a much younger demographic and faster-growing economies.
Apple's already strong position is set to surge now with the advent of the Apple iPhone 6 and 6L. These are available in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and Japan as of September 19th, with the roll-out to other countries in the region expected to follow shortly. Already talk in the street is that Hong Kong and Singapore will be swamped with applications for both their domestic market and for re-export to countries such as China and Indonesia to take advantage of the "must-have-now" demand there.
Apple Watch demand is hard to gauge at this early stage, though the premium gold watch is likely to attract instant high status demand among the region's wealthy, in an area where status symbol accessories are always in demand, and where gold is seen as a token of wealth and success.
The sweeping demand for the iPhone 6 range that is about to emerge in Asia is a factor to which many analysts, with their eyes glued to North America and Europe (and to a certain extent China), have failed to give due consideration. The demographics and economic growth rates point to this being a long-term boost for Apple, always providing of course that Apple succeeds in rolling out future products that are attractive. As we see from Samsung's recent decline, market leadership in this fast-moving sector can be short-lived.
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Disclaimer: Jeg har ikke aktier i Apple.
