Apple is having trouble producing enough new iDevices to meet market demand, but even if it does produce and sell them, it does so for less money than in the past. Starting with iPhone 5, Apple's profit per unit sold began to decrease because the components became more and more expensive. In the case of tablets iPad we know that things are not different at all it is estimated that in the future the profit of those from Apple will never again reach last year's shares, but here we are talking about the profit generated for the sale of a single unit and not about the total for a fiscal quarter.
Apple's gross profit per unit has likely peaked. Declining gross profit dollars per iPhone and volume sales of iPad are driving lower gross profit per unit of Apple product balance. Apple will have to sell more devices in order to maintain earnings. What happens now: I believe Apple should continue to try to gain share in the near-term, but ultimately should accept the limits of its market or come up with a new $100 billion product or service to drive growth. Checks suggest iPhone 5 is outselling its closest competition (which is iPhone 4S in some cases) by more than 4X.
The profit reduction comes in the idea of keeping the prices of own iDevices unchanged, at least in the most important countries, because in the rest of the countries the prices have increased every year. Even so, iDevices sell very well, iPhone 5 registering sales 4 times higher than iPhone 4S, the terminal that until now held the sales records for smartphones. It is unlikely that Apple will increase the prices of iDevices in order to increase the profit, considering that it is anyway much higher than that of the direct competitors.
