Apple Will Not Report iPhone Sales Figures Anymore, Stock Sinks

As usual, Apple’s (AAPL) quarterly earnings report release on Thursday was the top story in the tech business world. Even though the iPhone maker reported strong revenue growth, Apple’s share price dropped precipitously throughout Friday because of a seemingly minor change in the way Apple will handle earnings reports from here on out.

Going forward, Apple will not specifically report unit sales for the iPhone, Mac and iPad products, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said in Thursday’s earnings call, according to CNBC. The trillion dollar firm came up just short of analyst estimates for iPhone sales during the quarter, but it did note an increase in the average selling price of the iPhone.

That can be explained by Apple’s move towards more of a premium smartphone market with last year’s iPhone X and this year’s iPhone XS and XS Max models. Every indication points to new iPhones costing $1,000 or more for the foreseeable future. Thus, the price of the average iPhone sold might go up, even as unit sales go down.

By Friday afternoon, Apple’s share price had dropped by more than 6 percent. Maestri said Apple might give sales data when it feels it is necessary.

"By the way, our top competitors in smartphones, in tablets, in computers do not provide quarterly unit sales information, either," Maestri said, per CNBC. "But of course we understand that this is something of interest, and when we believe that providing qualitative commentary on unit sales offers additional relevant information to investors we will do so."

Still, individual unit sales have been a metric by which investors judge Apple’s success for some time. The main point of discourse surrounding Apple’s earnings report in May was whether or not the expensive iPhone X had sold well, for example. Investors may not be happy with Apple’s decision to stop reporting sales figures because it could give Apple a way to obfuscate poor sales.

Apple’s losses on the market were in line with the rest of the tech world. October was rough for tech firms, with Amazon reporting losses on consecutive days after its earnings report. Amazon’s forecast for the upcoming holiday season was lower than expected. Apple, meanwhile, reported a year-over-year revenue increase of 20 percent.