This week we reported that "Apple's iPhone SE is Squeezing Market Share from China's Local Brands Huawei and Xiaomi." Will that even matter on Tuesday when Apple reports their Q2 2016 earnings? Well it could slightly, according to Forbes writer Chuck Jones who states that "the iPhone SE's that Apple has shipped to wireless carriers such as AT&T, China Mobile and Verizon will be counted as sales. This channel fill could be 2 to 3 million units and increase Apple's March quarter iPhone sales above the expected 50 to 52 million …" I'm not saying that Apple is going to be breaking any records for the quarter for iPhones because they won't. Apple told us that in their guidance last quarter so there's no surprise on that front.

We noted in our Q1 earnings report that the Wall Street Journal reported Apple saying that iPhone sales grew at the slowest pace since its introduction in 2007 and forecast that revenue in the current quarter will decline at the steepest rate in 15 years, signaling an end to its recent period of hyper-growth.

Even though Apple noted that Q2 would show a slowdown in iPhone sales, the doom and gloom prophets love to drum up negativity prior to Apple reporting to grab headlines. International Business Times notes that analysts' consensus suggests Apple sold 50 million iPhones in the quarter, significantly down from the 61 million it sold in the 2015 first quarter. Again, while Apple won't have sales of 61 million because iPhone 6 mania broke every smartphone record on the planet and can't be reproduced on Apple's iPhone 6s follow-up model, Forbes thinking that the iPhone SE could be a small surprise is something to watch for on Tuesday.

With that being said, the doom and gloom that's the loudest of all today is from Ming-Chi Kuo from KGI securities, an analyst that many in the Apple community respect. They're really putting their neck on the line this time around and if they're wrong, could hurt their reputation.

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, "Apple will underperform the industry and become the only global top-five smartphone brand to see shipments decline in 2016." Wow, that's quite the off-the-wall prediction. Forget Apple's fiscal Q2, he's made the leap for the entire year.

Kuo believes that Apple's competitors such as Samsung, Huawei and others will outperform them – even though Samsung's fake sales records are due to giving huge numbers of them away for free. I think in terms of profit, Samsung won't be doing that well at all this year – so it's hard to take Kuo too seriously on that front.

Where Kuo spends most of his time is on the belief that that Apple will stumble and deliver a lukewarm iPhone 7 model this year which will have a negative impact on Apple to the point of actually being the only smartphone OEM to show shipment declines in 2016. Again, trying to beat Apple's iPhone 6 mania sales record will be challenging, but beating those of the iPhone 6s should be easy. That's what makes Kuo's analysis suspect this time around.

In the end, it'll all boil down to the iPhone 7's sex appeal. At present, there's an odd clash in Apple rumors about the bigger shift to the iPhone actually arriving in 2017. We've heard that there's going to be an all-new curved glass form factor, a shift to OLED and more. The new form factor rumor was actually started from Kuo himself with no other source confirming such a shift. So Kuo's analysis that he doesn't "see many attractive selling points for iPhone 7 in 2H16" being the basis of his dire forecast can't be taken too seriously as we're only entering Q2.

Apple is the leading smartphone maker on the planet and they certainly have the power to deliver new hardware features that no one has on their radar screens at this point in time and the power to deliver killer apps that no one could even fathom. Apple's proven track record of delivering an exciting new iPhone model every 2 years is unlikely to be broken in 2016 and on that point – I think Kuo's forecast for 2016 is simply out to lunch.

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