Apple hasn’t been getting much love on Wall Street in recent months, but new research suggests Apple’s iPhone line is holding up nicely against recent challengers from Samsung and HTC. Mark Gerber of Boston-based brokerage Detweiler Fenton did some digging and found that sales of Apple’s iPhone in the U.S. are still strong despite the recent launches of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and the HTC One. What’s more, Gerber says that iPhone 5 sales continue to make up a healthy portion of total iPhone sales, which will certainly come as good news for investors keeping a close watch on Apple’s margins.
“Our latest checks continue to indicate North American iPhone sales remain resilient, despite the high profile device launches from Samsung and HTC,” Gerber wrote in a recent note to clients. “Based on our checks, we believe QTD share at Verizon Wireless is only off a couple percentage points sequentially and that iPhone 5 continues to garner a larger percentage of iPhone share.”
He continued, “We believe that share at AT&T and Sprint has dropped slightly more than at VZ due to the Galaxy S4 share gains and that T-Mobile will sell approximately 1MM units in the June Q. We understand that US carriers had expected AAPL to lose more share in the June Q than what has played out thus far. Samsung’s GS4 has sold well but with it only up roughly 15% over GS3 sales in North America, AAPL has been able to maintain most of its share.”
Since smartphone sales are trending up sequentially and Apple’s share of sales is larger than expected, Gerber sees Apple selling 30 million iPhones globally in the June quarter.