[adventured]

Most people - including analysts - bought into the hype that nearly every person on earth would have a smartphone soon.

Instead, smartphone sales growth has fallen down to practically nothing globally. Apple is already missing the last growth wave, which is mostly made up of very cheap Android phones in India and China.

Those people also bought into the notion that Apple was going to dominate China, because of their early success there. It was talked up non-stop by Tim Cook. Instead, China will become an epic disaster for Apple, as they melt market share endlessly to nationalism and protectionism. The Chinese will only get more aggressive with Apple as the iPhone gets weaker as a product inside of China.

[jaegerpicker]

40 million for the iPhone alone is practically nothing!?!? Sure it's down but people on HN are a little crazy acting like Apple is going to go under because of this.

[chrisseaton]

The person you are replying to was talking about growth in sales. You've given a single yearly sales figure, which doesn't tell you anything about growth on its own.