2019 looks set to be one of the toughest years that Apple has faced this millennium. It's bad enough that Mac sales are pretty much flatlined, and iPad sales are on a downward trajectory, but what makes Apple's predicament much worse is that iPhone sales – along with smartphone sales in general – are weakening, and investors have become agitated now that Apple has said that it will no longer report on iPhone unit sales.



Was Apple's short time as the world's most valuable company "Peak Apple"?
Before looking into 2019, let's begin by looking at where Apple was at the beginning of 2018.
Dominating the Apple news cycle a year ago was that Apple had put code into iOS that it used to actively throttle older iPhones in order to mitigate the effects of battery wear. It was a clever technical solution for sure, but a poor one from a user experience perspective.
Apple did, however, manage to dig itself out of this hole. It was, after all, a technical problem, and one that it had created for itself.
But the problems facing the company in 2019 are quite different.

CAN APPLE CALM INVESTOR'S FEARS OVER NOT DISCLOSING UNIT SALES?

Investors took the news that Apple would no longer report on iPhone unit sales pretty badly, and saw it as a sign that things weren't good.
If revenues remain strong, then this could be enough to quell fears (for now), but if there's even a hint that the iPhone is no longer the cash cow that it has been for the past decade, things are likely to go from bad to worse in 2019.

CAN APPLE KEEP PUSHING USERS TOWARDS MORE EXPENSIVE IPHONES?

The trick that Apple has used to weather stagnant iPhone sales so far is to push up the Average Selling Price (ASP) by persuading buyers to opt for more expensive versions.
Apple's iPhone portfolio alone covers an exceptionally wide price spectrum, from $449 to $1,449, so focusing on units doesn't really tell the whole picture. But if it wants to keep revenues buoyant in the face of declining unit sales, it's going to have to figure out how to convince people to spend more on an iPhone.
One trick that I expect Apple to turn to is even more expansive iPhones. It wouldn't surprise me if 2019 was the year of the $2,000 iPhone.

Would you pay 10 percent more for your iPhone? Back in December, President Trump pondered slapping Chinese-made iPhones and MacBooks with a 10 percent tariff, claiming "people could stand that very easily." While that threat appears to have been put on hold for now, this is bound to raise concerns over at Apple HQ.
Apple's plan to spend $1 billion and add 5,000 new jobs in Texas, plus more jobs in Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City might be its way of trying to prevent these tariffs from becoming reality, but if the tariff war between the US and China continues into 2019, the likelihood of Apple getting caught in the crossfire increases.