Another Report Claims Apple Has Switched iPhone 15 Pro Back to Physical Buttons

A new research note from Haitong Intl Tech Research predicts that Apple has switched back to physical buttons for the iPhone 15 Pro, abandoning its initial plan to introduce new solid state buttons.

Analyst Shelly Chou says,

iPhone 15 Pro switched back to physical button design: Based on our supply chain checks, we now expect iPhone 15 Pro series to move back to the current design of a physical button due to a more complex design. This is contrary to our earlier expectation and market consensus of the solid-state "button-less" design, which requires an upgrade to three haptics. That said, we now forecast no haptics content value increase for iPhone 15 Pro series, with only one haptics per iPhone. We believe the solid-state design has been pushed out to iPhone 16 series in 2024, leading to our cut on AAC's total haptics revenue YoY to -1% YoY/+14% YoY in 2023/2024, vs. previous expectations of +12% YoY/+7% YoY.


The change has led Haitong to downgrade Apple to neutral...

"After factoring in our new haptics assumption, we lower our 2023 EPS estimate by 16%. As such, we downgrade AAC to neutral rating and lower our target price to HK$16.8, on 20x 2023 P/E (previously 22x), as we believe the lack of haptics upgrade will to lead to a discount in multiple."

Notably, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, has also predicted that Apple will abandon solid state buttons for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

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