First weekend of iPhone 16 sales seen as ‘bullish start’ for Apple: Wedbush

Despite some concerns to the contrary, the iPhone 16 appears to be selling well for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Wedbush Securities said.

Shares were little changed in premarket trading on Monday.

“With iPhone 16 units officially going on sale this weekend we believe Apple is off to a ‘strong demand start’ from our checks with this key upgrade cycle now out of the gates,” analyst Dan Ives wrote in an investor note. “While Apple Intelligence features will be released in phases over the coming months we believe the stage is set for iPhone 16 unit sales to be up high single digits and likely double digits starting with the December quarter.”

Ives maintained his Outperform rating and $300 price target on Apple.

Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman also stated that the iPhone 16 “may well be a hit product, based on the early buzz on launch day.”

With the introduction of artificial intelligence, a number of camera upgrades and better battery life as part of the iPhone 16, it’s possible the iPhone 16 upgrade cycle tops 90M units on initial launch and is up between 8M and 10M units over the iPhone 15, Ives added.

“With our estimates of 300 million iPhones of 1.5 billion iPhones not upgrading in 4 years this has created a golden opportunity for Cupertino to push iPhone 16 as the start of what we see as an AI driven supercycle,” Ives said. Throughout fiscal 2025, Apple could sell more than 240M units “as this AI-driven upgrade cycle takes hold,” Ives added.