UBS says Apple iPhone sell-through data showing improvement
Jozsef Zoltan Varga

Investment firm UBS said Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone sell-through data in February showed signs of improvement, citing third-party data.
Analyst David Vogt, who has a buy rating and per-share price target of $180 on Apple (AAPL), said sell-through data in February was down 3% year-over-year according to Counterpoint Research, compared to an 11% decline in January and roughly 18% drop in December 2022.
"Over the past two years, January and February typically account for roughly 70% of March quarter sell-through implying Mar-23 quarter sell-through of 56M vs almost 60M last year, down [roughly 7% year-over-year]," Vogt wrote in an investor note.
Delving deeper, Vogt noted that year-over-year sell-through data has turned around in the U.S., up 6.6% to 4.9M units, the first positive monthly figure since October 2022. He also noted that China sell-through data was up 4.7% year-over-year to roughly 4.5M units.
The analyst also noted that iPhone sell-through in India is up 28% year-over-year quarter-to-date, accounting for roughly 4% of total iPhone sell-through.
Conversely, European sell-through data fell 23% year-over-year to 3.4M units, though that was still a roughly 900 basis point improvement from January. 
"While the aggregate sell-through data on the margin does not change our March iPhone forecast, we note that the recovery in shipments in December/January and [quarter-to-date] sell-through checks suggests our 52M iPhone unit estimate could be modestly conservative," Vogt added.
Apple (AAPL) recently said that its annual developer conference, known as WWDC, would start on June 5.