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> We’re thrilled to report the biggest quarter in Apple’s history, with broad-based growth that included the highest revenue ever from a new iPhone lineup. iPho

by anw 9y ago

> We’re thrilled to report the biggest quarter in Apple’s history, with broad-based growth that included the highest revenue ever from a new iPhone lineup. iPhone X surpassed our expectations and has been our top-selling iPhone every week since it shipped in November This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. > The Company posted quarterly revenue of $88.3 billion, an increase of 13 percent from the year-ago quarter and an all-time record, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $3.89, up 16 percent, also an all-time record. As much as I see people deride the touchbar or the iPhone X notch, it seems consumers are at least willing to take a chance and try out something new.

david-cako 9y ago
Yeah if someone could explain the disparity between this press release and the general narrative that would be sweet. When the iPX first launched the narrative was "holy shit this phone is flying off the shelves", since then OLED stock has been falling (really good time to buy tbh), apple cuts back production, and the narrative has gone sour. What gives?
- jasonlotito 9y ago
  So, without taking a side, the part quoted doesn't conflict with what the press is saying. 1. highest revenue ever from a new iPhone lineup It's also the most expensive. Simply put, they could sell fewer iPhone Xs and still make more revenue simply because of the increased price. So even with the highest revenue, it could still be lackluster in quantity sold, as well as what the profit is like. 2. [iPhone X] has been our top-selling iPhone every week since it shipped in November It simply needs to sell more the other iPhones during the same time period. This makes sense, as it was released later than the iPhone 8. You could make the assumption that the majority of everyone that wanted an iPhone 8 would have bought one prior to the iPhone X being released. For here, a better comparison would have been units sold of a new iPhone and if it beat that. Again, I'm not suggesting it's a failure or a success, merely trying to look at the quote objectively and what it says, and what that really means.
- georgeecollins 9y ago
  Apple sold fewer phones than analysts expected, and fewer than they did last year. They sold 77.3m phones, and analysts expected them to sell 80.2m. They had greater revenue because the average price of phones has gone up. Apple issued guidance for this quarter that they expected revenue to be $60-62b. Analysts expected revenue of $65.9b. Stocks are priced on the expectation of the future, so the change in the expectation has probably had a negative effect on the price. As an individual investor (disclosure: I own a little AAPL) I think it is foolish to worry quarterly earnings and revenue forecasts. Yet it is what people write about. It is easier to write about quarterly earnings then it is to write about industry trends, in the same way it is easier to write about polls than it is to write about policy. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-01/apple-forecast-falls-short-as-iphone-sales-miss-estimates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-01/apple-for...
- oflannabhra 9y ago
  The current, negative narrative around the iPhone X is based on supply chain rumors. We don't know what Apple's original orders to suppliers were, but the numbers in many rumors were: "Apple cuts production 50%, from 40M to 20M." Analysts try to tease these numbers from the supply chain, but Apple is notoriously opaque with their supply chain, and typically use multiple suppliers for the same part. As noted by @rjones [1], 2Q total units sold historically range between 50-52M. If Apple had originally placed orders in Q218 for 40M iPhone Xs, then either a) iPhone X is 80% of all iPhone sales, which is hard to believe because of the current lineup diversity, or b) Apple expects total unit sales for 2Q18 to be above 80M, which is hard to believe because of 1Q18 guidance. The better explanation is that Apple probably cut production for any number of reasons, but nowhere near as drastic as 50%. 20M is 40% of 51M, which would point to the iPhone X selling very well through 2Q18, and continuing to be the best-selling iPhone model. [1] - https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/958421107245232128 https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/958421107245232128
  - matwood 9y ago
    Exactly. Apple also has said the iPhoneX was a phone to show new technologies. It may not move into the second cheaper slot next gen, and instead may just go away. If that's the case then of course they are starting to figure out how to slow down production to prep for later this year.
saagarjha 9y ago
> This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. This happens every year when a new iPhone comes out. Contrarian news drives clicks.
- jjtheblunt 9y ago
  More scandalously, contrarian news from "analysts" drives down share prices, which rebound healthfully after earnings, and the SEC really could have fun addressing this gaming of the market to the benefit of the analysts.
  - jacksmith21006 9y ago
    Not rebounding. Flat this morning and down from $180 earlier in 2018. Barclay new price target is $162 this morning. Also a couple downgrades "Apple gets two downgrades due to ‘dramatically’ slowing iPhone X demand" https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/02/apple-gets-two-downgrades-due-to-dramatically-slowing-iphone-x-demand.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/02/apple-gets-two-downgrades-du... From this morning after releasing results.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  But iPhone unit sales did decline YoY for the quarter? Plus Q2 guidance was $60B versus consensus of $66B for Q2. The analyst and the reports seem accurate. Can you explain? It was never about Q1 but Q2 - Q4 and guidance. Apple is down from $180 in 2018 and flat this morning. Barclay new price target this morning is $162.
smaili 9y ago
> International sales accounted for 65 percent of the quarter’s revenue. Could be related to the above? Most of the publicity I've seen is domestic to US, but it's certainly possible overseas has a much different view on the iPhone X.
- oflannabhra 9y ago
  iPhone ASP was up to $796. That indicates that the iPhone X sold very well.
- netheril96 9y ago
  I’m a Chinese, and all of Chinese social media I read managed to convince me that it was finally the year of Apple’s decline.
e1ven 9y ago
We see this over and over - People guess how many iPhones Apple is selling, and predict a big problem. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/10/03/iphone-7-sales-first-two-weeks/#114ba6362342 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/10/03/iphone-7-...) Later, Apple releases numbers which suggest that it's selling great (https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-7-tim-cook-first-quarter-sales/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-7-tim-cook-first-quar...) I think maybe it's time to stop listening to "analysis" on their sales until there are real numbers.
- coralreef 9y ago
  In the iPhone X's case its not analysis on sales, its leaked rumors of production cuts.
  - SG- 9y ago
    and this happens every year as they always cut them down after the initial major release.
  - beat 9y ago
    They probably put together a production cut plan just in case (as they should), and then someone finds out about it and assumes that because they made a plan to do a thing, that they're going to do a thing. Popular thinking can't really wrap its head around risk management.
    - MBCook 9y ago
      The normal Apple analysis people/sites have been discussing this. You can run into things where Apple likes to have multiple suppliers, so maybe they decide to cut their order with supplier A by 50% because they don’t think they’re doing well enough where they can get a better price somewhere else. Supplier A talks to a friend in the media and all of a sudden the story is that Apple has a big problem because their new phone isn’t selling. What no one is saying (possibly because as we all know Apple like secrecy and repolish them) is that supplier B had a 30% increase in orders from Apple, or supplier C is now coming online when they weren’t involved before. Since we don’t have the whole picture, it’s hard to know what’s actually going on outside of effectively one rumor. Or it could be stock manipulation.
zmk_ 9y ago
"top selling iPhone" is a relative statement, the whole pie can be shrinking and Apple could've hoped for more sales, but compared to other (8 and older) iPhones it is still doing good. The forecasts in the media were about the absolute levels not relative.
- megy 9y ago
  Well, they sold 77.3m this quarter compared to 78.3m last quarter. The whole pie is shrinking, but by a tiny amount. But they made $7b more revenue from that. So it worked out well for them.
  - jdminhbg 9y ago
    Last quarter was 14 weeks vs the normal 13 so it's more like it's flat or a tiny bit up than shrinking.
    - wklauss 9y ago
      And the smartphone market as a whole is shrinking too, and more than 1%. Context, in this cases, matters a lot. Id say sales of iPhone this Q have been really good, considering X was a very risky proposition (high price, casts shadows over 8)
- pdpi 9y ago
  The absolute levels are their best quarter ever. Can’t possibly be that bad, can it?
  - philwelch 9y ago
    Their best quarters were supply-constrained. If there are d units demanded and p units produced, and d >> p, then unit sales = p. Next year, if there are d' units demanded and p' units produced, and d' >= p' while p' > p, then unit sales are going to go up. This tells you a little bit about d', but not everything.
megy 9y ago
> This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. People really like believing in rumours.
- at-fates-hands 9y ago
  Apparently this wasn't a "rumour" though. There was a LOT of chatter about the cancellation of the X in the summer due to low numbers: In a new report obtained by AppleInsider, acclaimed KGI Securities’ analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says disappointing sales of the iPhone X will lead to the cancellation of the model “with production ceasing in the summer”. This would be the first time Apple has canceled an iPhone model after just one generation since the iPhone 5C in 2014. Apparently he's been pretty consistent in getting big leaks like this right: Kuo, who has a long track record successfully revealing Apple’s plans, said lack of interest in China is the main reason. In China big screens are king and the iPhone X’s polarising "notch" is seen by Chinese consumers as removing too much usable space. Especially when the cheaper iPhone 8 Plus actually delivers slightly more. The news also follows a new survey from Cowan that claims an interest in new iPhones has hit a historic low. https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/01/21/apple-iphone-x-buy-sales-specs-new-iphone-release-date/#c73a4df10cbd https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/01/21/apple-ip...
  - megy 9y ago
    > Apparently he's been pretty consistent in getting big leaks like this right: This still makes it a rumour.
  - pwinnski 9y ago
    It's a rumor you thought had more credence than average, but it was still a rumor. A rumor which turned out to be false, as this annual spate of rumors always does. So far. One day they might be right. Apple can't hit and exceed expectations forever, probably. But so far it's the same old bad rumors every year.
  - Eric_WVGG 9y ago
    Kuo is usually right about the supply chain, and usually wrong in interpretation. OLED screens are in short supply, and that will take a few years to turn around. This November, Apple can either split their limited supply of OLEDs between iPhone X and iPhone Xs (or XI or whatever that winds up being called). And that's not even factoring the likely larger-screen model...
JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
It could still be lackluster and sell more than previous versions. The iPhone is still spreading out into the world I assume, and the proportion of the world that wants or can buy an iPhone keeps increasing for a while longer.
douglaswlance 9y ago
Publicity is almost always wrong.
jaxondu 9y ago
> This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. It probably has become lackluster in some countries thus giving those reports. Definitely true in Singapore, there were plenty of IPX stocks available in Dec unlike previous years. But it's doing very well in China so overall it's a win for Apple.
- megy 9y ago
  That could mean demand is down, or it could mean that supplies are up.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    There were a lot of rumors last year that Apple was shifting a lot of their supply to China and other Asian countries where they thought demand would be much higher relative to the US for the new model. That could explain it too.
  - jaxondu 9y ago
    Apple has officially said that stocks are constrained for IPX during launch. You can easily get an iPhone X in Singapore two weeks after its launch in late Nov onwards. And this is the week IPX is launching in further 13 countries. For the past many years, limited number of new iPhone are given to telcos each day during launch month. If you want to get one through telco, you have to queue up before the shop opens and stocks are gone by noon. Unless Apple changes its marketing strategy by flooding IPX to a very small Singapore market, I see this as clear sign demand is weak.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
philwelch 9y ago
iPhone X wasn't as supply-constrained as previous iPhones. Whatever that says about iPhone X demand, it won't make a revenue difference at this juncture. Apple's improving their operations every year, so they can ship more units now than they could last year or the year before. Previously, if Apple was completely supply-constrained between launch and the holiday season, they would only earn revenue on the quantity of iPhones they could ship. Now that Apple has improved their supply chain volume, their launch quarter units shipped will go up purely as a function of that, and their revenue will also increase as a function of the higher unit price of iPhone X. The only difference, if there truly is one, will come in the next quarter or two. If a product is supply-constrained, there's a backlog of demand for it that only gets met down the road. If the product isn't supply-constrained, there isn't as much backlog and consequently, unit sales and revenue won't be as high. But that doesn't affect the launch quarter because the launch quarter is completely limited by supply. If iPhone X was a total flop, of course, that would have shown up by now. But "iPhone X less popular at launch than iPhone 6" is a hypothesis we can't judge yet. Edit: It's also really, really easy to tell whether a product is supply constrained. Just go to apple.com and see how long it'll take to ship. See if people are scalping them on Craigslist for a premium over the retail price. These kinds of things happen with major console launches and used to happen with Apple's product launches, but Apple is one of the biggest consumer electronics brands in the world, has some of the best operations in the world, and contracts with the best high-volume electronics manufacturer in the world, so it's more than possible for them to overcome the supply constraints that "plagued" previous launches. iPhone has an installed base of 1.3 billion users. That's more than 1/6 of the world population. At this point, there probably aren't even enough people in the world who can afford smartphones for demand to grow as fast as supply. If Apple's operations and supply chain can grow faster than the global middle class, they're going to get past their supply constraints, and apparently they already have. That's not necessarily a reflection on this year's iPhone.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
rgrieselhuber 9y ago
Also of note, sounds like slowing all those batteries down really did the trick.
almostApatriot1 9y ago
I mean, it's not surprising considering the 8 is split into two phones. Did people really think one of them would beat out the X? They made more money, but only because everything they sell is more expensive. Shipped fewer devices this quarter.
berberous 9y ago
>>"As much as I see people deride the touchbar or the iPhone X notch, it seems consumers are at least willing to take a chance and try out something new." The problem is that Apple is still the market leader in many respects. For example, in my opinion, Apple's build quality, customer service and trackpad are still so far ahead of the PC industry that I wouldn't buy a non-Apple laptop. I also think touch ID is a great addition. But I don't want the touchbar. Too bad, if I want the latest Mac laptop with touch ID, I'm forced to take the touchbar.
- eanzenberg 9y ago
  There's nothing low-quality about the touchbar on my mac. It works as expected with the added benefit of flexibility. People just like to knock on the #1 guy. It's easy and gets clicks.
  - dpark 9y ago
    Lots of people also just don’t like the touch bar. I had one and found it useless and annoying. Previously one-touch things like adjusting the audio volume became multi-press affairs. I constantly bumped the touch bar when using the number keys, which was really fun when entering a phone number in Chrome, because it would throw me into the search bar. I would not call the touch bar low quality. I would call it useless. On a related note, the massive trackpad was the first one Apple has produced that bugged me. It got stuck in “drag” mode frequently because my palm would register as a touch point. It also didn’t always register clicks on the right edge. Still better than almost all other trackpads I’ve used. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft. Was testing the latest MacBook Pro for my own use.
    - wjamesg 9y ago
      People sure do seem to love using “disclosure” statements around here to brag about where they work
      - dpark 9y ago
        It’s not a brag. It would feel unethical to criticize a competitor’s product without disclosing the obvious conflict of interest.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
> This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. I'm pretty sure China alone made the X worthwhile.
makecheck 9y ago
Since the X is very expensive, “top selling” doesn’t necessarily mean “most units”. Maybe they sold more 8s for less overall.
EugeneOZ 9y ago
> This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. You just were looking for such opinions.
ggg9990 9y ago
People fucking love their iPhones. People on this site don’t seem to realize that — I see comments of the form “I can’t run bash on it, so it’s going to fail.”

by anw 9y ago

david-cako 9y ago

Yeah if someone could explain the disparity between this press release and the general narrative that would be sweet. When the iPX first launched the narrative was "holy shit this phone is flying off the shelves", since then OLED stock has been falling (really good time to buy tbh), apple cuts back production, and the narrative has gone sour. What gives?

jasonlotito 9y ago
So, without taking a side, the part quoted doesn't conflict with what the press is saying. 1. highest revenue ever from a new iPhone lineup It's also the most expensive. Simply put, they could sell fewer iPhone Xs and still make more revenue simply because of the increased price. So even with the highest revenue, it could still be lackluster in quantity sold, as well as what the profit is like. 2. [iPhone X] has been our top-selling iPhone every week since it shipped in November It simply needs to sell more the other iPhones during the same time period. This makes sense, as it was released later than the iPhone 8. You could make the assumption that the majority of everyone that wanted an iPhone 8 would have bought one prior to the iPhone X being released. For here, a better comparison would have been units sold of a new iPhone and if it beat that. Again, I'm not suggesting it's a failure or a success, merely trying to look at the quote objectively and what it says, and what that really means.
georgeecollins 9y ago
Apple sold fewer phones than analysts expected, and fewer than they did last year. They sold 77.3m phones, and analysts expected them to sell 80.2m. They had greater revenue because the average price of phones has gone up. Apple issued guidance for this quarter that they expected revenue to be $60-62b. Analysts expected revenue of $65.9b. Stocks are priced on the expectation of the future, so the change in the expectation has probably had a negative effect on the price. As an individual investor (disclosure: I own a little AAPL) I think it is foolish to worry quarterly earnings and revenue forecasts. Yet it is what people write about. It is easier to write about quarterly earnings then it is to write about industry trends, in the same way it is easier to write about polls than it is to write about policy. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-01/apple-forecast-falls-short-as-iphone-sales-miss-estimates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-01/apple-for...
oflannabhra 9y ago
The current, negative narrative around the iPhone X is based on supply chain rumors. We don't know what Apple's original orders to suppliers were, but the numbers in many rumors were: "Apple cuts production 50%, from 40M to 20M." Analysts try to tease these numbers from the supply chain, but Apple is notoriously opaque with their supply chain, and typically use multiple suppliers for the same part. As noted by @rjones [1], 2Q total units sold historically range between 50-52M. If Apple had originally placed orders in Q218 for 40M iPhone Xs, then either a) iPhone X is 80% of all iPhone sales, which is hard to believe because of the current lineup diversity, or b) Apple expects total unit sales for 2Q18 to be above 80M, which is hard to believe because of 1Q18 guidance. The better explanation is that Apple probably cut production for any number of reasons, but nowhere near as drastic as 50%. 20M is 40% of 51M, which would point to the iPhone X selling very well through 2Q18, and continuing to be the best-selling iPhone model. [1] - https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/958421107245232128 https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/958421107245232128
- matwood 9y ago
  Exactly. Apple also has said the iPhoneX was a phone to show new technologies. It may not move into the second cheaper slot next gen, and instead may just go away. If that's the case then of course they are starting to figure out how to slow down production to prep for later this year.

saagarjha 9y ago

> This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. This happens every year when a new iPhone comes out. Contrarian news drives clicks.

jjtheblunt 9y ago
More scandalously, contrarian news from "analysts" drives down share prices, which rebound healthfully after earnings, and the SEC really could have fun addressing this gaming of the market to the benefit of the analysts.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Not rebounding. Flat this morning and down from $180 earlier in 2018. Barclay new price target is $162 this morning. Also a couple downgrades "Apple gets two downgrades due to ‘dramatically’ slowing iPhone X demand" https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/02/apple-gets-two-downgrades-due-to-dramatically-slowing-iphone-x-demand.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/02/apple-gets-two-downgrades-du... From this morning after releasing results.
jacksmith21006 9y ago
But iPhone unit sales did decline YoY for the quarter? Plus Q2 guidance was $60B versus consensus of $66B for Q2. The analyst and the reports seem accurate. Can you explain? It was never about Q1 but Q2 - Q4 and guidance. Apple is down from $180 in 2018 and flat this morning. Barclay new price target this morning is $162.

smaili 9y ago

> International sales accounted for 65 percent of the quarter’s revenue. Could be related to the above? Most of the publicity I've seen is domestic to US, but it's certainly possible overseas has a much different view on the iPhone X.

oflannabhra 9y ago
iPhone ASP was up to $796. That indicates that the iPhone X sold very well.
netheril96 9y ago
I’m a Chinese, and all of Chinese social media I read managed to convince me that it was finally the year of Apple’s decline.

e1ven 9y ago

We see this over and over - People guess how many iPhones Apple is selling, and predict a big problem. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/10/03/iphone-7-sales-first-two-weeks/#114ba6362342 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/10/03/iphone-7-...) Later, Apple releases numbers which suggest that it's selling great (https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-7-tim-cook-first-quarter-sales/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-7-tim-cook-first-quar...) I think maybe it's time to stop listening to "analysis" on their sales until there are real numbers.

coralreef 9y ago
In the iPhone X's case its not analysis on sales, its leaked rumors of production cuts.
- SG- 9y ago
  and this happens every year as they always cut them down after the initial major release.
- beat 9y ago
  They probably put together a production cut plan just in case (as they should), and then someone finds out about it and assumes that because they made a plan to do a thing, that they're going to do a thing. Popular thinking can't really wrap its head around risk management.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    The normal Apple analysis people/sites have been discussing this. You can run into things where Apple likes to have multiple suppliers, so maybe they decide to cut their order with supplier A by 50% because they don’t think they’re doing well enough where they can get a better price somewhere else. Supplier A talks to a friend in the media and all of a sudden the story is that Apple has a big problem because their new phone isn’t selling. What no one is saying (possibly because as we all know Apple like secrecy and repolish them) is that supplier B had a 30% increase in orders from Apple, or supplier C is now coming online when they weren’t involved before. Since we don’t have the whole picture, it’s hard to know what’s actually going on outside of effectively one rumor. Or it could be stock manipulation.

zmk_ 9y ago

"top selling iPhone" is a relative statement, the whole pie can be shrinking and Apple could've hoped for more sales, but compared to other (8 and older) iPhones it is still doing good. The forecasts in the media were about the absolute levels not relative.

megy 9y ago
Well, they sold 77.3m this quarter compared to 78.3m last quarter. The whole pie is shrinking, but by a tiny amount. But they made $7b more revenue from that. So it worked out well for them.
- jdminhbg 9y ago
  Last quarter was 14 weeks vs the normal 13 so it's more like it's flat or a tiny bit up than shrinking.
  - wklauss 9y ago
    And the smartphone market as a whole is shrinking too, and more than 1%. Context, in this cases, matters a lot. Id say sales of iPhone this Q have been really good, considering X was a very risky proposition (high price, casts shadows over 8)
pdpi 9y ago
The absolute levels are their best quarter ever. Can’t possibly be that bad, can it?
- philwelch 9y ago
  Their best quarters were supply-constrained. If there are d units demanded and p units produced, and d >> p, then unit sales = p. Next year, if there are d' units demanded and p' units produced, and d' >= p' while p' > p, then unit sales are going to go up. This tells you a little bit about d', but not everything.

megy 9y ago

> This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. People really like believing in rumours.

at-fates-hands 9y ago
Apparently this wasn't a "rumour" though. There was a LOT of chatter about the cancellation of the X in the summer due to low numbers: In a new report obtained by AppleInsider, acclaimed KGI Securities’ analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says disappointing sales of the iPhone X will lead to the cancellation of the model “with production ceasing in the summer”. This would be the first time Apple has canceled an iPhone model after just one generation since the iPhone 5C in 2014. Apparently he's been pretty consistent in getting big leaks like this right: Kuo, who has a long track record successfully revealing Apple’s plans, said lack of interest in China is the main reason. In China big screens are king and the iPhone X’s polarising "notch" is seen by Chinese consumers as removing too much usable space. Especially when the cheaper iPhone 8 Plus actually delivers slightly more. The news also follows a new survey from Cowan that claims an interest in new iPhones has hit a historic low. https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/01/21/apple-iphone-x-buy-sales-specs-new-iphone-release-date/#c73a4df10cbd https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/01/21/apple-ip...
- megy 9y ago
  > Apparently he's been pretty consistent in getting big leaks like this right: This still makes it a rumour.
- pwinnski 9y ago
  It's a rumor you thought had more credence than average, but it was still a rumor. A rumor which turned out to be false, as this annual spate of rumors always does. So far. One day they might be right. Apple can't hit and exceed expectations forever, probably. But so far it's the same old bad rumors every year.
- Eric_WVGG 9y ago
  Kuo is usually right about the supply chain, and usually wrong in interpretation. OLED screens are in short supply, and that will take a few years to turn around. This November, Apple can either split their limited supply of OLEDs between iPhone X and iPhone Xs (or XI or whatever that winds up being called). And that's not even factoring the likely larger-screen model...

JohnJamesRambo 9y ago

It could still be lackluster and sell more than previous versions. The iPhone is still spreading out into the world I assume, and the proportion of the world that wants or can buy an iPhone keeps increasing for a while longer.

douglaswlance 9y ago

Publicity is almost always wrong.

jaxondu 9y ago

> This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. It probably has become lackluster in some countries thus giving those reports. Definitely true in Singapore, there were plenty of IPX stocks available in Dec unlike previous years. But it's doing very well in China so overall it's a win for Apple.

megy 9y ago
That could mean demand is down, or it could mean that supplies are up.
- MBCook 9y ago
  There were a lot of rumors last year that Apple was shifting a lot of their supply to China and other Asian countries where they thought demand would be much higher relative to the US for the new model. That could explain it too.
- jaxondu 9y ago
  Apple has officially said that stocks are constrained for IPX during launch. You can easily get an iPhone X in Singapore two weeks after its launch in late Nov onwards. And this is the week IPX is launching in further 13 countries. For the past many years, limited number of new iPhone are given to telcos each day during launch month. If you want to get one through telco, you have to queue up before the shop opens and stocks are gone by noon. Unless Apple changes its marketing strategy by flooding IPX to a very small Singapore market, I see this as clear sign demand is weak.
deleted 9y ago
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philwelch 9y ago

iPhone X wasn't as supply-constrained as previous iPhones. Whatever that says about iPhone X demand, it won't make a revenue difference at this juncture. Apple's improving their operations every year, so they can ship more units now than they could last year or the year before. Previously, if Apple was completely supply-constrained between launch and the holiday season, they would only earn revenue on the quantity of iPhones they could ship. Now that Apple has improved their supply chain volume, their launch quarter units shipped will go up purely as a function of that, and their revenue will also increase as a function of the higher unit price of iPhone X. The only difference, if there truly is one, will come in the next quarter or two. If a product is supply-constrained, there's a backlog of demand for it that only gets met down the road. If the product isn't supply-constrained, there isn't as much backlog and consequently, unit sales and revenue won't be as high. But that doesn't affect the launch quarter because the launch quarter is completely limited by supply. If iPhone X was a total flop, of course, that would have shown up by now. But "iPhone X less popular at launch than iPhone 6" is a hypothesis we can't judge yet. Edit: It's also really, really easy to tell whether a product is supply constrained. Just go to apple.com and see how long it'll take to ship. See if people are scalping them on Craigslist for a premium over the retail price. These kinds of things happen with major console launches and used to happen with Apple's product launches, but Apple is one of the biggest consumer electronics brands in the world, has some of the best operations in the world, and contracts with the best high-volume electronics manufacturer in the world, so it's more than possible for them to overcome the supply constraints that "plagued" previous launches. iPhone has an installed base of 1.3 billion users. That's more than 1/6 of the world population. At this point, there probably aren't even enough people in the world who can afford smartphones for demand to grow as fast as supply. If Apple's operations and supply chain can grow faster than the global middle class, they're going to get past their supply constraints, and apparently they already have. That's not necessarily a reflection on this year's iPhone.

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rgrieselhuber 9y ago

Also of note, sounds like slowing all those batteries down really did the trick.

almostApatriot1 9y ago

I mean, it's not surprising considering the 8 is split into two phones. Did people really think one of them would beat out the X? They made more money, but only because everything they sell is more expensive. Shipped fewer devices this quarter.

berberous 9y ago

>>"As much as I see people deride the touchbar or the iPhone X notch, it seems consumers are at least willing to take a chance and try out something new." The problem is that Apple is still the market leader in many respects. For example, in my opinion, Apple's build quality, customer service and trackpad are still so far ahead of the PC industry that I wouldn't buy a non-Apple laptop. I also think touch ID is a great addition. But I don't want the touchbar. Too bad, if I want the latest Mac laptop with touch ID, I'm forced to take the touchbar.

eanzenberg 9y ago
There's nothing low-quality about the touchbar on my mac. It works as expected with the added benefit of flexibility. People just like to knock on the #1 guy. It's easy and gets clicks.
- dpark 9y ago
  Lots of people also just don’t like the touch bar. I had one and found it useless and annoying. Previously one-touch things like adjusting the audio volume became multi-press affairs. I constantly bumped the touch bar when using the number keys, which was really fun when entering a phone number in Chrome, because it would throw me into the search bar. I would not call the touch bar low quality. I would call it useless. On a related note, the massive trackpad was the first one Apple has produced that bugged me. It got stuck in “drag” mode frequently because my palm would register as a touch point. It also didn’t always register clicks on the right edge. Still better than almost all other trackpads I’ve used. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft. Was testing the latest MacBook Pro for my own use.
  - wjamesg 9y ago
    People sure do seem to love using “disclosure” statements around here to brag about where they work
    - dpark 9y ago
      It’s not a brag. It would feel unethical to criticize a competitor’s product without disclosing the obvious conflict of interest.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

> This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. I'm pretty sure China alone made the X worthwhile.

makecheck 9y ago

Since the X is very expensive, “top selling” doesn’t necessarily mean “most units”. Maybe they sold more 8s for less overall.

EugeneOZ 9y ago

> This is interesting, as the majority of the publicity I've seen about the iPhone X has painted it as lackluster. You just were looking for such opinions.

ggg9990 9y ago

People fucking love their iPhones. People on this site don’t seem to realize that — I see comments of the form “I can’t run bash on it, so it’s going to fail.”