Apple Shipped an Estimated 29 Million iPhone X Devices in Q4 2017

[Lappen71]

Well we are 7.6 billions people world wide so yes 29M... it is a failure...we are talking about cell phones here even kids have one nowadays...

So in your world if not sold in billions everything is a failure
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My Guts feeling is that the X sold below the expectations of Apple otherwise we would not see so many articles trying to figure out and comments from many analysts.

Your gut feeling isn't worth anything.
Fact and statistic is and the fact is that iPhone x i selling better than domesday predictions said.

 

[chatin]

The problem is not phones sold in 2017 but sustaining demand in 2018. The X has hit a solid wall of adopters who want to buy it but have too many concerns about the price and design.

 

[jeremy h]

Hard to understand which are the real numbers as not clear if true sales to end users or if including the ones stocked by the operators (who were forced to make big orders to avoid missing the opportunity)

My Guts feeling is that the X sold below the expectations of Apple otherwise we would not see so many articles trying to figure out and comments from many analysts.

I tend to agree. I've hardly seen any in the wild here in the UK. I appreciate the is anecdotal but the teenagers I know, who are normally obsessed with the latest phone releases are very negative and meh about this one. I think it seems to do with an increasing feeling that Apple are becoming less interested in product and more interested in complex pricing structures - for example carefully manipulating us towards £800-1000 whatever phone we buy. (Where's the 64gb iPhone 7 for example? The current iPhone line up from a features / capacity perspective looks a real mess to me)

 

[himanshumodi]

They reached JUST 78 bn in a quarter last year? Poor Apple. So devastating. /s
[doublepost=1516789695][/doublepost]In seriousness though, X sales might not be as fast as previous models, but how did the sales rank in terms of revenue for iPhone X?

 

[urtules]

By Apple standards, those numbers are a failure. Many many people did not upgrade to the iPhone X. That’s not a good sign or thing.

I don't upgrade my iPhone until it breaks. No matter how good X is, I would still use my 6s.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

The problem is not phones sold in 2017 but sustaining demand in 2018. The X has hit a solid wall of adopters who want to buy it but have too many concerns about the price and design.

Right, and before that it was “$999/$1150 is well past the price consumers will pay for a cell phone. This model is dead out of the gate.”

The X line has not hit a wall. It hit the stratosphere and has many more miles to travel with plenty of fuel. The price has become normalized now. 29m is not only geeky early adopters. Sure some consumers will still opt for a non-X, but the X line (OLED, thin bezel) will remain the flagship model and revenue leader for Apple for many years.

 

[Dave245]

This is probably why Apple are set to announce over EIGHTY BILLION at the quarterly earnings on February 1st. I wonder what we will see for the next Phone X? if they keep the same design but just add a bigger version (iPhone X Plus) then i might stick with my current iPhone X, it is easily the best iPhone yet!!

 

[DNichter]

Not surprising. I was expecting the X to sell very well as it's easily the best iPhone they have come out with. Looking forward to where they take the software in 2018.
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Touch ID is still more popular than Face ID. This is the only reason Apple keeps selling 2 year old phones!

The figure they won't give you is that the iPhone 7 outsold the iPhone X. And combined, they pummeled the iPhone X!

It has more to do with cost than anything. If they priced the X at $799, everyone would buy regardless of Touch ID or Face ID. The cost made it a niche buy, although a very profitable niche for Apple. They'll keep Touch ID around for a couple more years with the low end options for those that can't adapt.

 

[gatearray]

Anyone who still talks about the notch hasn't used an iPhone X. It's invisible after a day or two.

Oh no, do you mean the IR blaster in FaceID has blinded you in just a matter of days?!

 

[spazzcat]

I wish my failures where this good...
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Touch ID is still more popular than Face ID. This is the only reason Apple keeps selling 2 year old phones!

The figure they won't give you is that the iPhone 7 outsold the iPhone X. And combined, they pummeled the iPhone X!

I will never go back to a phone with Touch ID...

 

[AnthonyG6]

29,000,000 phones x $999 = $28,971,000,000 / 38% = $11,008,980,000.

That's 11 BILLION in revenue from this 1 phone in the Quarter. Unbelievable.

I'm sure a lot of people like me would have bought the more expensive 256GB model at $1149, so that revenue could be even bigger?

 

[Adelphos33]

In comparison with Q4 2014:

• iPhone 6: 42 million
• iPhone 6 Plus: 16 million

And those numbers don't include 9 days in Q3 2014 as the iPhone 6 series was available in September.

Is iPhone X a success? Kinda. Is it the supercycle that Apple wanted? Definitely no.

You have to combine 8/8+/X sales to compare them to any prior launch

 

[AnthonyG6]

"no one is going to buy a thousand dollar phone"...oh wait!

 

[jdclifford]

Oh no, do you mean the IR blaster in FaceID has blinded you in just a matter of days?!

Not completely true. I had one for a day and returned it because of the notch.

 

[RickInHouston]

I am just curious how long their success will last. Looking at Microsoft and all, but that was a different era of tech.

It will happen. History never lies. You just have to look back and see everything BIG that has been taken down sooner or later. The latest I've noticed is shopping malls and strip centers. They are getting emptier and emptier.

 

[TheTruth101]

Can I return mine?

 

[deanthedev]

Never in the history of Apple have they released a correction upward and they have routinely reported to a large beat. Companies don’t revise mid quarter and say, we are going to do better. They might not have known how well they would do until the very last few weeks anyway. This situation wouldn’t be anything close to stock manipulation. A courtesy heads up might be customary if the company is cratering.

What is your definition of large? I’ve don’t recall Apple ever being close to an $8B beat.

Though I agree a beat would be far less likely of a notice than a miss.

 

[ChrisCW11]

I would still love to "fail" the way Apples does, but I think their recent iOS software quality issue and the schism created by offering both iPhone 8 AND X in the same quarter ultimately impacted there sales. Had, perhaps, Apple focused only on the X release, and then offered the iPhone 8 as a mid-cycle "value" phone, they might have seen much higher sales figures.

I mean sure, Apple "fails" in this market better then most other companies succeed, but if you look at Apple specifically compared to their past performance, as an investor you should be worried about last year. Apple made decisions that impacted its growth, period, both by releasing unpolished OS software AND by trying to dump a bunch of different, but not very different, phones on a market at the same time. Both speak to the quality of leadership at Apple.

Apple can usually bank on whatever quarter they release their iPhone as being their best quarter for that year, the other 3 quarters are usually mediocre by their standards, and even by their competition. If Apple screws up a quarter, even in a way that still has them emerge as the top phone maker in that quarter, it should be concerning to investors. The other 3 quarters are not going to make up for the lower then expected iPhone 8 and X sales, historically they never do. So in the end 2017 was a miss for Apple, period. Ultimately X will not grow the brand as much as Apple hoped for.

Whether this is a one time snag, or an emerging trend is yet to be seen, but at the end of the day Apple is ONLY worth its market cap if investors trust it can deliver growth on every iPhone release, otherwise it will slip to becoming an also-ran company that might have very good sustained profits but not the growth like what Apple has been used to over the last 10 years. One trillion in market cap means nothing because it can evaporate very quickly if Apple continues to lag on software AND hardware quality issues like iOS 11 and batterygate.

Regardless of how well Apple did compared to the competition, Apple is in recovery mode, or at least should be, based on their own performance history. If consumer confidence, and investor confidence, starts to chip away from their brand even a company as big as Apple can lose a lot of ground quickly.

 

[drewyboy]

Ask Huawei or google if they would be happy out the gate if they had a single model that had “failure” numbers like that and gained them that much profit.

That has to be the worst argument ever and a clear showing that you don't understand why it's bad.
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8) The 58M iPhone 6 sold in 2014 will be about the same revenue as 30M iPhone X. Did you consider that?.

You made a lot of good points, but what's the general goal here? Revenue or customer upgrades? Revenue could be equal or possibly greater on the X vs 6 for the quarter comparison, but you only got ~half to upgrades. Did you lose those ~30M to other brands? Are they staying put with their current iPhone?

With only half the number of upgrades, it could be argued that the CLV is going down. How much, I have no idea. Maybe it's being offset by X owners increasingly spending more.

I'm pretty sure you've mentioned before you're an investor so good for you, honestly. I've got no skin in the game. Don't currently have the $ to invest. So I understand why you're bullish on things, and rightfully so. But it blows my mind how happy people are and even encouraging higher prices when all they are is a consumer. Mind blowing.

 

[78Bandit]

Analyst numbers are all over the place. Some show the X selling less than 10% for the quarter, some say 20% of U.S. sales, and this says around 38% of expected global sales were the X. I'm not putting any more credence in this positive report than I put on the negative reports. We'll have a better idea once Apple releases its earnings in just over a week and we see iPhone sales, revenue, and average selling price.

I wonder if Tim Cook would do a callout to emphasize the new generation's success, something like "the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X accounted for 60% of total sales" to refute the multitude of reports that show the 7 and 7 Plus taking the top spot by a fair margin.

 

[mudflap]

Just for lack of notch or the whole design like bezels and such?

I was unsure about the notch at first but when I finally held the iPhone X in my hands I was surprised to see just how tiny it is! And once I realized you can configure videos to be cropped at the notch instead of playing "under" it, it became a non-issue for me.

Of course I'd love it if Apple found a way to hide the cameras under the display, but the tech just isn't there yet.

 

[HowieIsaacks]

I guess all that BS about iPhone X not selling well was just FUD. How do the always wrong analysts even have jobs?

 

[thadoggfather]

I guess all that BS about iPhone X not selling well was just FUD. How do the always wrong analysts even have jobs?

Same reason fake news journalists have jobs. Credibility and honesty are not only optional, but probably considered weakness

 

[Remy149]

Why is Apple selling iPhone 6s still? It's gotten out of hand how many models they sell now. Consumers are actually confused (and it's a disservice for anyone to buy a 6s at this point).

They probably keep them for corporate buyers the hospital I work in adopted iPhone 6s as the device we use in house
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I got a headphone dongle with my X.
It's in the little travel pouch that contains my 20 year old Etymotic headphones I use when I fly.
Which isn't often. So I've yet to use the dongle.
I've also got a MacBook Air which has an gig-ethernet dongle which I rarely use either. Only for when WiFi isn't fast enough for a large/lot of file transferring.
That's what dongles are for. Just in case you really must use something that most people rarely use any more.
Why do we need to have the headphone jack back in?
For the 1% who think they are so self important that it MUST be part of the package. I think not...

Thank you I haven’t used the headphone jack since I bought the iPhone 3GS. I own a pair of AirPods and beats solo 3 and Love both

 

[zorinlynx]

The problem is not phones sold in 2017 but sustaining demand in 2018. The X has hit a solid wall of adopters who want to buy it but have too many concerns about the price and design.

Also remember all the people who bought an iPhone 7 or 7+ last year and still have plenty of life left in their phone.

Not everyone buys a new phone every year.