A new report from Asia detailing Apple-related supply chain gossip indicates the company might be selling well over 200 million combined iPhone 6 units in its 2015 fiscal year (from October 2014 to September 2015). Digitimes has learned from sources familiar with the matter that Apple has ordered up to 250 million units of combined iPhone 6 and Apple Watch chips. Of those, up to 40 million chips might be produced for the Apple Watch, leaving the rest for iPhone 6 models.
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The publication says that chipset orders for the iPhone 6 for the first quarter of 2015 have exceeded 50 million units, matching orders Apple placed for the fourth quarter of the year.
Apple has confirmed it sold over 10 million iPhone 6 units during launch, with analytics data suggesting the company may have topped 21 million iPhone 6 sales in the first two weeks, even before launching in China.
However, Digitimes’ report does not say anything about upcoming iPad models. It’s likely that Apple will use the same A8 chips for the iPad Air 2, and next-gen Retina iPad mini models, in which case Digitimes isn’t counting potential A8 iPad sales for the company’s next fiscal year.
When it comes to iPhone 6 sales, BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman said a week after the iPhone 6 launch and before Apple announced the iPhone 6 launch for China, that Apple might sell 189 million iPhones units in its fiscal year 2015, 74% of which (almost 140 million) are expected to be iPhone 6 units.
The analyst acknowledged that the Chinese iPhone 6 launch is very important for Apple’s next fiscal year, and could bring in an additional 10 million iPhone 6 sales during the December quarter. It the mean time, the iPhone 6 has been announced in China, where more than 4 million iPhone 6 reservations have been registered well ahead of preorders.
Furthermore, the company may sell some 60 million tablets next year, according to the same analyst, with many of them likely to be last-gen devices that would be equipped with the same chip that’s found on both iPhone 6 models.
Before Apple’s iPhone 6 announcement, JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall said Apple could sell 235 million iPhones units in fiscal year 2015, as CNET reports, in a best case scenario. He also offered a less bullish forecast of 200 million iPhones sales, and a bearish one of just 164 million iPhone 6 sales during the period.
