The June Chinese shopping festival and Apple's offering on the iPhone SE made it the best-selling smartphone during the second quarter. The Apple shares Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) is currently listed at $ 375. Yesterday, Apple announced that it was the fastest growing smartphone brand in China during the second quarter of 2020.
The countertrend of Apple stock in the smartphone sector
The smartphone giant based in Cupertino has managed to unlock the slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Apple's launch of a cheaper iPhone SE variant has helped fuel sales.
At the same time, the significant discounts and growing popularity of the iPhone 11 played an important role. In the period between April and June, the company's sales volume in China was 7,4 million units.
According to Counterpoint Research, the smartphone giant has grown by 32% year-on-year. In addition to Apple, only Huawei has seen an increase in sales volumes during the second quarter of 2020 in China.
Other Chinese brands such as Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi have recorded significant declines. The overall smartphone market dropped 17% year-on-year over the same period. During the Chinese shopping festival in June, Apple offered big discounts on the iPhone which maintained its sales momentum.
According to the Counterpoint Research note, the cheapest and newly launched iPhone SE was among the top three best-selling iPhones. JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee exceeded the Apple stock price target (APPL) at $ 425 from the previous $ 365.
Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, will testify in the antitrust hearing
Later today, Apple CEO Tim Cook will testify before the House's antitrust subcommittee. This happens at a time when Apple is facing criticism of its App Store.
Detractors contested some of the platform's inconsistent rules. Additionally, there are complaints that Apple's 30% commission on digital transactions for app purchases is too high.
In the comments prepared by the committee, Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote: “The smartphone market is extremely competitive and companies such as Samsung, LG, Huawei and Google have created very successful smartphone businesses by offering different approaches.
Apple has no dominant market share in any market in which it operates. " Speaking of the detractors' questions about distributing Apple's software and work as a gatekeeper, Cook said, "Clearly, if Apple is a gatekeeper, what we've done is open up the larger gate. We want to get all the apps we can on the store, not keep them away. "
Together with Tim Cook, other big tech space personalities like Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will testify before the committee.
