Apple Incorporated shares fell 3.9 per cent on Friday after the iPhone 5 debuted in China to a cool reception and two analysts cut shipment forecasts.
Reuters reported that Jefferies analyst Peter Misek trimmed his iPhone shipment estimates for the Jan-March quarter, saying that the technology company had started cutting orders to suppliers to balance
excess inventory.
Shares of Apple suppliers Jabil Circuit Incorporated, Qualcomm Incorporated, Skyworks Solutions Incorporated, TriQuint Semiconductor Incorporated, Avago Technologies Limited, and Cirrus Logic
Incorporated also fell in early trading.
Apple shares have lost a quarter of their value since they hit a life high of $705.07 on September 21, as it faces increasing competition from phones using Google Incorporated's Android operating system.
Misek cut his first-quarter iPhone sales estimate to 48 million from 52 million and gross margin expectations for the company by two percentage points to 40 per cent.
UBS Investment Research cut its price target on Apple stock to $700 from $780 on lower expected iPhone and iPad shipments for the March quarter.
The brokerage said it was modeling more conservative growth for the world's biggest technology company after making supply chain checks that revealed that fewer iPhones were being built.
