Loop Capital has cut Apple from "Buy" to "Hold" and lowered its price target from $370 to $330, after concluding that about 13 million iPhones missing from Apple's second-half 2026 plans are unlikely to come back.
The firm had assumed that shortages of memory and processors only delayed those shipments, and that Apple would catch up in 2027. Its latest supply chain checks ended that assumption. Loop now forecasts 79 million iPhone shipments for the December quarter, down from 85 million. It also cut its forecast for average selling price (total revenue divided by units sold) from $1,239 to $1,123.
The 2027 picture is odder. Loop now expects Apple to ship more iPhones than it earlier thought, 260 million in all, but at lower average prices. It reduced its iPhone revenue forecast from $315 billion to $285 billion. Loop also said rising memory costs could squeeze Apple's profits, and that the split launch schedule makes the financial outlook harder to assess.
The arithmetic shows how much the price change matters. By our math, the December quarter forecast implies roughly $89 billion in iPhone revenue, against about $105 billion under the old numbers, a drop of around 16%. Loop did not tie the lower prices to a specific cause. Our inference is a shift toward cheaper models or discounting to keep volume up, and that is not Loop's stated reasoning.
The launch calendar is unusual. The iPhone 18 Pro models arrived in September and the iPhone Duo launches October 23. The standard iPhone 18, iPhone 18e and iPhone Air 2 are not expected until spring 2027.
Demand is not the weak point. Apple reached a record 22% market share in the third quarter, even as global smartphone shipments fell 20% year over year. Loop's argument is about supply and pricing, which raises a narrower question: whether a spring wave of cheaper models can win back volume without pulling the average price down further.