Analysts expect Apple to post its first quarterly year-over-year revenue decline today since 2003, down about 10% to $52B, driven by shrinking iPhone sales
Apple is about to post its first quarterly revenue decline since 2003 — Apple's incredible growth streak is expected to officially come …
Context & Ripple Effects
The night before Apple reports, the question isn't whether the streak ends but how badly: analysts model a ~10% drop to $52B, which would be the company's first quarterly year-over-year revenue decline since 2003, with shrinking iPhone sales as the driver. The follow-up coverage confirms it was worse than billed — Apple actually posted $50.6B, missing estimates, in its Q2 report the next day.
What makes this print a turning point rather than a blip is what the arc around it shows: a steeper 15% revenue drop followed that summer, and years later Apple was still posting declines, including its largest annual quarterly revenue drop since 2016 in early 2023.
First-order effects
- Apple ends a thirteen-year unbroken growth run in a single print, with net income falling alongside revenue and management guiding the next quarter even lower at $41B-$43B.
- Investors repricing Apple off iPhone unit volumes — 51.2M sold, down year over year — lose the 'growth stock' framing that supported the multiple.
Second-order effects
- With iPhone units falling 15% the following quarter, Apple's growth case shifts toward non-iPhone lines — Mac and iPad revenue both grew by 2019, when iPhone fell below half of total revenue for the first time since 2012.
- A maturing installed base pushes the financial narrative from units sold to monetization per user, making services and attach-rate metrics the yardstick analysts grade Apple on instead of handset shipments.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — declines in 2016 recurring through 2023 — Apple structurally becomes a mature-hardware company whose earnings depend on squeezing more revenue from existing devices rather than selling new ones, a shift visible in every subsequent down quarter.
- Sustained iPhone dependence cuts both ways: each cycle of unit softness reopens the question of whether Apple can build a second growth engine at scale, the unresolved tension running from this 2016 miss through the 2023 declines.
The trend: Apple's transition from an iPhone-unit growth story to a mature platform judged on revenue per user, punctuated by recurring down quarters whenever handset sales stall.