We’re Raising Our Apple Price Target After iPhone Share Gains

Shares of Apple (AAPL) are bucking the broader market decline Monday, and we can trace that outperformance to a few factors.

Arguably the biggest reason centers on the company’s iPhone business and its stronger performance in the second quarter. According to research firm Omdia, Apple grew its smartphone market share to 20% in Q2 2026, up from 16% in Q2 2026, while overall smartphone shipments slumped 4% year over year. The underlying math is that iPhone shipments grew 4 percentage points compared to the year-ago quarter.

Counterpoint Research is also out with its view that industry shipments fell 11%, year over year, in Q2 2026, but it also saw Apple taking share as its shipments rose 3% year over year, giving it a record 20% piece of the smartphone market. That paints a larger relative gain for Apple.

Remember, these are just unit shipment numbers, and the real impact to Apple’s revenue stream will be determined by the mix of iPhones sold during the quarter between its low-tier models and the iPhone Pro and Pro Max ones.

Is it possible there is some pre-buying ahead of potential prices increases later this year when Apple reveals its next model line-up? That’s certainly possible given what we are reading about memory prices and where they are headed, but it will also hinge on what those potential price points are and any new features built into those new models. So, that’s to be determined.

A second reason behind Apple’s performance Monday is that Citi increased its price target on AAPL shares to $365 from $315 as it expects “the company to continue gaining market share despite a slowing devices end market.” Not to steal Citi’s thunder, but the Omdia and Counterpoint findings for Q2 2026 reveal that is the case. We do think Apple’s leading-edge supply chain offers it a distinct advantage over other smartphone companies, especially those that focus on lower-tier models that will have a tougher time absorbing higher components costs.

Third, Bloomberg’s Apple reporter, Mark Gurman, has floated the likelihood Apple’s first public iOS 27 beta software release could come this week. We talked about why we will be tracking consumer reception to this when we discussed that lackluster WWDC event in early June. Because it is only the first beta release, we are likely to see more robust features come in successive releases building up to the formal software release this fall.

Lastly, the European Commission noted that Apple has acquired data log management and observability startup SigScalr. SigScalr is the company behind the observability platform SigLens, which helps developers collect, search, and analyze logs, metrics, and traces generated by apps and infrastructure. That solution competes with ones from Splunk (CSCO), Datadog (DDOG), and Elastic (ESTC).

Raising Our AAPL Price Target

Last week, we said that Apple was one of the price targets we needed to revisit. Following the Omdia and Counterpoint findings, we are lifting our target to $350 from $305 and bumping up our checkpoint to $280 from $268. As we digest Taiwan Semi’s (TSM) Q2 2026 end-market comments and guidance for H2 2026, we’ll revisit those figures as needed.

Should we see market forces pull AAPL shares back near $300, we would have to reconsider our current Two rating as we head into what is typically the seasonally strongest time of the year for Apple’s products. Before we make such a decision, however, we would want to hear from known Apple suppliers as they report their Q2 2026 earnings and update their outlooks for the back half of 2026.

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro was long AAPL.