It was just under a week ago when word first emerged that tech giant Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was having issues making sales on its new line of iPhone devices. Now, new word is emerging that’s reinforcing the idea that Apple’s hotly-popular line of devices may not be so popular this time around. Despite this, however, Apple shares are up fractionally in Monday afternoon’s trading.
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The latest word comes from JPMorgan, who set its product availability trackers on the iPhone 15 and discovered that lead times have moderated once more. This is the fourth week in a row that supplies have moderated, the JPMorgan reports note, and now, they’re running at about 11 days on average. By way of reference, lead times were up around 16 days for the iPhone 14 and 24 days for the iPhone 13, though that may have had more to do with supply chain issues than with actual demand.
Still, reaching 11 is a clear sign of potential trouble for Apple. Moreover, JPMorgan’s report isn’t alone; we’ve already discussed Bank of America’s assessment, and UBS was also spotted noting that demand appears to be down. Even Jefferies got involved, talking about the iPhone’s sales in China.
Yet, Apple isn’t exactly daunted by this; a new report suggests that Apple may be planning to bring out a whole new product line before it announces earnings on November 2. This time, it’s a new iMac, specifically, a 24-inch model that could see an announcement before Halloween.
It’s been over 900 days, at last report, since Apple released a new iMac in the M1 version from 2021. Apple breaking the streak this close to earnings season might well shake things up enough to help it out going into the big announcement.
Is AAPL Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on AAPL stock based on 20 Buys and nine Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average AAPL price target of $207.51 per share implies 19.61% upside potential.
