Another Tech Sector Optical Illusion Is Shattered

Shares in Sunny Optical slumped after an earnings miss—the latest sign of investors’ unforgiving approach to companies that disappoint

Apple may have skirted the slowing smartphone market to become the U.S.’s first trillion-dollar company. Elsewhere, investors are rapidly recalibrating their view of the industry’s outlook.

Shares in Sunny Optical, a Hong Kong-listed firm which makes smartphone cameras and lenses for the likes of China’s Huawei, plunged 24% Tuesday, wiping out $4 billion of market value. The catalyst was Sunny’s poor first-half earnings, particularly the first year-over-year decline in the company’s gross profit margin since 2014. Sunny blamed...