Apple Will Reduce iPhone 7 Production By 10% in Early 2017 Due to 'Sluggish' Sales

[fs454]

While all this is true it is not clear to me why would you give credit to Apple for improving the fingerprint sensors. A trip version was not that good not because Motorola screwed it up but because the sensors (and phone CPUs) were not that good at the time. Sensor vendors improved their products since then. That's it

Nope. Not at all. There was no integration with the OS, no way to keep it secure, and it used the unreliable "swipe" method that never saw fast results. They simply threw some off the shelf fingerprint recognition hardware into a phone case, and enabled some basic nonsecure use within the OS.

It's absolutely mind boggling that you can absolve Apple of credit for improving fingerprint sensors when they're the sole company that innovated on the matter. Secure enclave, no swiping, seamless integration, and use cases beyond just unlocking. All credit to Apple. They didn't just take a preconceived piece of hardware and slide it in, they designed the entire thing in-house and worked closely with TSMC to manufacture it. Nobody had that. Sorry.

Sure, it got faster, and you can credit that to the increased power of phone SoCs. But you're out of your mind to say that Apple cannot take credit for innovating and mass marketing.

 

[ani4ani]

You realize what happened to the Note 7 trying to make it smaller? Boom!

And to others, stop with the headphone jack... the new Galaxy is already said to have removed the headphone jack, but that was just a news article here... on a rumor site that is already saying the iphone will start to reduce production.

Just look at the winner for the most device activations for the holiday season? 40+% for Apple versus 20+% for Samsung. Everyone is buying before xmas and production might drop after? Shocking.

Yea, why not share the whole story, that that 40% is lower than this time last year and despite the Note 7 debacle Samsungs share had risen year over year.

 

[truthertech]

Can you give me your definition of a 'troll' please? Because I read the word 'troll' a lot, not only from you but in general over here. Most of the time I read the stories people respond to as an opinion from a person. Mostly people that don't take everything Apple does for granted and are critical at some aspects are put away as a 'troll'. So I'm wondering what's a 'troll' for you.

Sure, this is, or at least once was, a site for Apple fans, enthusiasts, etc., to discuss all things Apple, both pro and con. Trolls aren't people who post thoughtful criticisms of Apple. Apple is far from perfect so thoughtful discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of products is great. If I could point out a couple of thoughtful pundits who don't hesitate to criticize and praise Apple I use Jason Snell at Six Colors and Andy Ihnatko at Macbreak Weekly as examples of people who can have interesting conversations as Apple fans that frequently take Apple to task.

In contrast, troll are the ones who post things simply to cause rancor and disruption of the conversation among Apple fans. It's often just the mindless comments like "Fire Tim Cook" "Courage," some comment on thinness. They extoll the virtues of competitors and will criticize everything about Apple. I am not a fan of Google for many reasons, primarily because of their destruction of privacy, etc., but I wouldn't think to go on Google or Android sites and just post how Google "sucks" and talk about how great Apple is because I respect the fact that Google enthusiasts are there because they want to have intelligent discussions among fans of Google. A troll would jump on there because they need attention or are working through any number of personal issues, feeling of powerlessness, anger, resentment, etc.

I try to counter troll because trolling is a serious problem. Many informed people who have interesting things to contribute have simply given up because they are tired of the swamp that many of these forums have become. Macworld just recently gave up and no longer has comments on their articles because they no longer want to try and moderate them. They just threw it over to the master swamp of Twitter. I recognize that MR is desperately trying to stay in business with a model dependent on advertising clicks. That binds them to an unholy alliance where they feel the need to push out headlines that will arouse anti-Apple trollers and then put up with an ever increasing number of trollers on MR.

My hope is that MR will recognize that in the longer term, putting up a "Trollers not Welcome" sign and making it clear this site is for Apple fans, yes fans of Apple that can discuss pros and cons of Apple, is in the site's best interest.

Sorry for the long winded reply, but not a simple topic and it's killing MR.

 

[NY Guitarist]

'These are not the phones we're looking for'.

Mac Pro stagnation has sadly caused our business to plan a move to windows based workstations which escalated into a move away from Apple in general. Phones are the devices we replace most often so they are the first non-Apple purchases being made. Too bad.

 

[truthertech]

This is a fundamental problem outside the US in particular. The last two years has seen a very strong rise in the US dollar against every major currency in the world (25% increase on average). Apple has tried to maintain margins by boosting prices to levels that many consumers just can't take. Since Trump was elected the US dollar has moved up a further 5% and this will put more pressure on sales.

Fundamentally I think the demand is still there but it's just the price is out of whack internationally (not sure what price rises have been in the US). Smartphones are a mature market and in general that means margin compression. There have been no killer features on the newer models and older models are still very functional. I'm writing this on a 3 year old 5s and it works very well. The main reason I see for upgrades among my friends is a shattered screen. They wouldn't upgrade otherwise.

I don't think this can simply be dismissed as a non-story. There is a clear stagnation in iPhone sales and I can't see any change to this unless Apple starts to meet the market on price.

"Clear stagnation???" What evidence do you have that the iPhone 7 sales haven't increased over the 6s or that iPhone sales in general haven't increased? I've seen some analyst's predictions that the iPhone 7 will have record sales. No one knows so how can it have "clearly stagnated?"

 

[nfl46]

What's wrong with using wired USB head phones?

Wires get tangled up, they rip and at times cumbersome. With wireless, I don't have to worry about cords getting in the way. I think most issue with the transition to wireless is the sound quality isn't up to par with wired headphones YET. I am looking forward to the day where I don't have to plug my iPhone charger into a wall socket and can truly wireless charge it. 50 years from now, we will look back and probably be shocked we even used wired headphones. Change is not easy but it's necessary to move forward in the future.

 

[truthertech]

SO ... we'll have absolutely NO idea how many of those sales where 7 and 7+ ... Apple pulling the wool as always.

"Red! Red! Your lunch is ready. Now get off the computer, wash your hands and get up here for lunch."

 

[decafjava]

Well Apple, it may be a good idea to not use the same design for three years in a row.

Same basic design since 2014 will do that. iPhone 8 will be an impressive launch for apple.

New design and all.

Forget the A10 chip, capacity upped to 256GB for the largest model, improved battery (certianly comapred to the 6) better screen, batter taptic engine etc. etc. Yes nothing to do with post-holiday sales.

 

[RedOrchestra]

No, we will have a very close idea, and Apple may break it down, but will probably include the SE and 6s in those sales in the report.

Geez, I wish MR would invoke some kind of fact checking of individuals comments . the gruel that gets posted here as fact is of the clear the track I'm going to throw variety.

Here's the real truth about Apple sales numbers - the company is nothing but a bunch of hoodwinkers - we'll have absolutely NO idea of how many units were sold in each of the 5 that different iPhones that Apple currently has for sale i.e. the 7 and 7+ sales are tallied with the SE, the 6, and the 6+ - in fact we know nothing about individual model sales because of their grouping - and it's unbelievable how gullible the ecosystem has become and gulps it all down. u.n.b.e.l.i.e.v.a.b.l.e

 

[pat500000]

i guess people is gonna love eating Tim Cook for cereal...like Kellogg's corn flakes.....thurrrrr great!!!

 

[Cineplex]

Not enough emojis. Maybe the iPhone 7s can have a touchbar. Yaaaaa an emoji touchbar.

 

[Vorkeyjones]

So even with the exploding Samsung phone, Apple still didn't sell as many iPhone's as they hoped. Haha.

 

[truthertech]

Geez, I wish MR would invoke some kind of fact checking of individuals comments . the gruel that gets posted here as fact is of the clear the track I'm going to throw variety.

Here's the real truth about Apple sales numbers - the company is nothing but a bunch of hoodwinkers - we'll have absolutely NO idea of how many units were sold in each of the 5 that different iPhones that Apple currently has for sale i.e. the 7 and 7+ sales are tallied with the SE, the 6, and the 6+ - in fact we know nothing about individual model sales because of their grouping - and it's unbelievable how gullible the ecosystem has become and gulps it all down. u.n.b.e.l.i.e.v.a.b.l.e

You've got to read Red. Oh, that's right, you are just here to troll the evil Apple, the master "hoodwinkers" as you call them. So why let facts get in your way, we get it.

What does the post actually say, that they will probably, as they have in the past, just combine them, but they may break it out, for example Apple typically reports opening week sales numbers for the new phone. They decided not to do that this year, so there's a good chance they may break it out in the quarterly report. Beyond that, we do agree that you "know nothing about individual model sales," that's the one accurate thing in your trolling post. But, the rest of the thinking world can extrapolate based on all sort of evidence as what percentage of the sales were in each category, e.g., third party sales reports, web site reports, etc.

You do get extra credit from the trolling club today as you are one of the first, if not the first, trollers to claim that Apple is lying about how many phones it sells and is "hoodwinking" everyone. LOL

 

[falainber]

Nope. Not at all. There was no integration with the OS, no way to keep it secure, and it used the unreliable "swipe" method that never saw fast results. They simply threw some off the shelf fingerprint recognition hardware into a phone case, and enabled some basic nonsecure use within the OS.

It's absolutely mind boggling that you can absolve Apple of credit for improving fingerprint sensors when they're the sole company that innovated on the matter. Secure enclave, no swiping, seamless integration, and use cases beyond just unlocking. All credit to Apple. They didn't just take a preconceived piece of hardware and slide it in, they designed the entire thing in-house and worked closely with TSMC to manufacture it. Nobody had that. Sorry.

Sure, it got faster, and you can credit that to the increased power of phone SoCs. But you're out of your mind to say that Apple cannot take credit for innovating and mass marketing.

"Swipe" or not depends solely on the type of sensor which Apple did not develop (at some point they did buy a sensor company, but the sensor implementation was improved by then by multiple vendors). "Secure enclave" is just another example of Apple using fancy (magic) names for commonly known concepts (retina display, motion coprocessor, taptic engine etc.). They did have some advantage in better integrating the features into the OS and they properly used those. Android has catched up with this by now. That's the extent of Apple innovation in this area.

 

[truthertech]

"Swipe" or not depends solely on the type of sensor which Apple did not develop (at some point they did buy a sensor company, but the sensor implementation was improved by then by multiple vendors). "Secure enclave" is just another example of Apple using fancy (magic) names for commonly known concepts (retina display, motion coprocessor, taptic engine etc.). They did have some advantage in better integrating the features into the OS and they properly used those. Android has catched up with this by now. That's the extent of Apple innovation in this area.

How do you explain away that Apple Pay now has zoomed past all the competitors, including Samsung, Google, etc., to dominate the market with 75% of all contactless payments??????

 

[falainber]

Then they should have waited until they had the proper hardware to support their fingerprint scanners. This is wrong with companies always trying to put stuff out before it's ready. You see Apple paid the price when they came out with Apple Maps before it was ready.

Why? It's not like iPhone (without a fingerprint sensor at the time) had any advantage compared to Atrix (except for lower Bill of Materials of course). Use of the fingerprint sensor was optional.

 

[RedOrchestra]

How do you explain away that Apple Pay now has zoomed past all the competitors, including Samsung, Google, etc., to dominate the market with 75% of all contactless payments??????

Give us a link to that number, would ya? or did you just spit ball it like everything else you write.

Haven't got one, didn't think so - so I'll give you a couple, you know real data with the real story behind Apple Pay usage ...

http://www.pymnts.com/news/mobile-payments/2016/apple-pay-adoption-usage-2016/

http://www.pymnts.com/apple-pay-adoption/

 

[falainber]

Forget the A10 chip, capacity upped to 256GB for the largest model, improved battery (certianly comapred to the 6) better screen, batter taptic engine etc. etc. Yes nothing to do with post-holiday sales.

Yes, it has nothing to do with post-holiday sales. 10% drop in sales is compared to previous post-holiday sales (i.e. iPhone 6S) not compared to pre-holiday sales (the latter one is way bigger than 10% but is expected)

 

[Sedulous]

More garbage and poorly assembled rumors. Direct evidence indicates that Apple sold the lion's share of devices based on new device activation. If anything, supplier data indicates other manufacturers are reducing their orders.

 

[falainber]

More garbage and poorly assembled rumors. Direct evidence indicates that Apple sold the lion's share of devices based on new device activation. If anything, supplier data indicates other manufacturers are reducing their orders.

If you'd read the device activation data carefully you'd noticed that while Apple did sell "the lion's share of devices" this share was actually smaller than it was last year. Besides it's a relative number. If all sales tanked this would mean Apple sales tanked too even if its share did not drop (but, yet again, it did drop).

 

[derekamoss]

Sure, this is, or at least once was, a site for Apple fans, enthusiasts, etc., to discuss all things Apple, both pro and con. Trolls aren't people who post thoughtful criticisms of Apple. Apple is far from perfect so thoughtful discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of products is great. If I could point out a couple of thoughtful pundits who don't hesitate to criticize and praise Apple I use Jason Snell at Six Colors and Andy Ihnatko at Macbreak Weekly as examples of people who can have interesting conversations as Apple fans that frequently take Apple to task.

In contrast, troll are the ones who post things simply to cause rancor and disruption of the conversation among Apple fans. It's often just the mindless comments like "Fire Tim Cook" "Courage," some comment on thinness. They extoll the virtues of competitors and will criticize everything about Apple. I am not a fan of Google for many reasons, primarily because of their destruction of privacy, etc., but I wouldn't think to go on Google or Android sites and just post how Google "sucks" and talk about how great Apple is because I respect the fact that Google enthusiasts are there because they want to have intelligent discussions among fans of Google. A troll would jump on there because they need attention or are working through any number of personal issues, feeling of powerlessness, anger, resentment, etc.

I try to counter troll because trolling is a serious problem. Many informed people who have interesting things to contribute have simply given up because they are tired of the swamp that many of these forums have become. Macworld just recently gave up and no longer has comments on their articles because they no longer want to try and moderate them. They just threw it over to the master swamp of Twitter. I recognize that MR is desperately trying to stay in business with a model dependent on advertising clicks. That binds them to an unholy alliance where they feel the need to push out headlines that will arouse anti-Apple trollers and then put up with an ever increasing number of trollers on MR.

My hope is that MR will recognize that in the longer term, putting up a "Trollers not Welcome" sign and making it clear this site is for Apple fans, yes fans of Apple that can discuss pros and cons of Apple, is in the site's best interest.

Sorry for the long winded reply, but not a simple topic and it's killing MR.

You call them trolls, I just call them the iPhone Generation where as I'm in the Mac Generation.
But even I have to say, Cook needs to go, if at least for the appearance of a fresh face for the customers. I suggest two CEOs even one for mac and one for ios and pick them from someone who has actually worked on the products.

 

[bozzykid]

Yup. Must be from sluggish sales, and not from the usual sales volume decline after the rush of a launch of a new model and holiday shopping season.

The production changes already took the slowing of sales after the new year into effect. This 10% drop is in addition to that.

 

[nordesmic]

"Clear stagnation???" What evidence do you have that the iPhone 7 sales haven't increased over the 6s or that iPhone sales in general haven't increased? I've seen some analyst's predictions that the iPhone 7 will have record sales. No one knows so how can it have "clearly stagnated?"

Well the fact that no one knows should be a warning sign in itself. But the fact that there has been three consecutive quarters of year on year negative revenue growth is pretty clear evidence of at least stagnation. iPhones make up a huge proportion of revenue. No mention of iPhone 7 sales yet but I struggle to see how the trend reverses.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/appl...-results-iphone-mac-sales-down-again-3581769/

• International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter's revenue.

 

[tooltalk]

You realize what happened to the Note 7 trying to make it smaller? Boom!

And to others, stop with the headphone jack... the new Galaxy is already said to have removed the headphone jack, but that was just a news article here... on a rumor site that is already saying the iphone will start to reduce production.

Just look at the winner for the most device activations for the holiday season? 40+% for Apple versus 20+% for Samsung. Everyone is buying before xmas and production might drop after? Shocking.

Umm.. not sure what you mean, the Note 7 is Samsung's flagship phablet phone. They were not trying to make it small -- they are supposed to be big.

?? The next Galaxy is at least 5 months away. The rumor is just as credible as Apple's iPhone 10% production cut rumor.

Well, I'm not sure how Flurry's guesstimates are any better in this respect. In the first place, Flurry's survey indicates that while Apple had 40+% "new activation" -- it represents 5% decline YoY -- while Samsung's share grew from 19% to 21%. Now, Flurry's claims are very questionable since they are in the business of counting "app downloads," not "new activations." Their "new activiation" figures are never verified or tested against the true activation or sales figure held by Apple or Google.

 

[sidewinder3000]

IF that is the case, I'll be getting an S8 or Note 8. I would have ended this 10 yr iPhone relationship this yr if the Note 7 hadn't blown up.

Do it. Please.