Apple's Decision to Slash iPhone X Production Volume in Q1 2018 Could Delay Future OLED Models

[Chupa Chupa]

If Apple does report a record breaking $19b income, the next quarter will be viewed as an utter disaster.

No it won't because Wall Street looks at other comparisons like same quarter, previous year. Investors are more sophisticated than comparing back-to-back quarters because seasonality and context is a thing. What matters first is that Apple's 2Q 2018 is better than 2Q 2017. But if not, why -- could be some one-off externality that caused that -- natural disaster, supply issue, transactional charge, etc. Then comes the quality of that revenue and the sales trend, again, adjusted for seasonality.

 

[I7guy]

Which has an inferior LCD screen to the current LCD models, lacks 3dt, lack dual cameras and will come with lower ram. The only reason to get that is no bezels and FaceID. If I couldn't afford the X or X Plus next year I would get the 8 and I think that's the way most consumers roll nowadays. The competition isn't standing still.

You know all of this how? Treating rumors as factual information? While there is no doubt less cost equals less features we will see.

 

[DoubleFlyaway]

Guess not everyone is tired of the same 4 year old design

The thing is— the latest and greatest iPads look exactly the same as the 8/8+. So... that design isn’t really going to look any more old fashioned in a phone (to most people) than it does in an ipad until it’s actually gone from flagship products.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Which goes to show that design changes are what sells and not internals and spec bumps.

If that were true then Apple would never have bothered with "S" models, which were mostly internal upgrades, and instead issued the same phone in new colors. Certainly changing the case color is a heck of a lot less expensive for Apple than reengineering the phone.

 

[Falhófnir]

Ultimately CONSUMERS decide what a price should be by buying on opting not to buy. Sure there's some that will be quick to pay anything but it's the masses that ultimately drive the claims to records. If the masses say no, there's not enough, "I'll pay anything you ask" fans to make up for them.

There will always be those who will buy something at any cost - especially with Apple. In this instance it sounds like they dramatically overestimated how big that group of people was. sales of 29 million in one quarter for such a device are good - the question always has been what happens in Q2-4 of its availability, and especially with the model that succeeds it. an 'XI' thats much the same and without the hype of being the special 10th anniversary iPhone was always going to be a very hard sell at $1,000 - especially with most of the evangelists already having a X.

 

[Mydel]

It was for me. I could afford it but the idea of paying £1000 for a phone just seemed ridiculous.

Same here. I am on my 7S plus. Just could not justified 11 000 NOK !

 

[Rogifan]

No it won't because Wall Street looks at other comparisons like same quarter, previous year. Investors are more sophisticated than comparing back-to-back quarters because seasonality and context is a thing. What matters first is that Apple's 2Q 2018 is better than 2Q 2017. But if not, why -- could be some one-off externality that caused that -- natural disaster, supply issue, transactional charge, etc. Then comes the quality of that revenue and the sales trend, again, adjusted for seasonality.

Yet the stock is down 2% this morning. Wall Street is obsessed with the quarter immediately following the holiday quarter. It’s as if the holiday quarter doesn’t exist.

 

[WannaGoMac]

All these comments are basically the same thing again and again. Mostly everyone feels the X is overpriced, and some decided to just spend the extra others didn't.

Personally, I still debate my selection of an X versus an 8 Plus. The issue I have is the 8 Plus is a boring same old phone. I want something different when I finally buy new devices because I am a long cycle phone owner. I kept my 4s until the 6 Plus offered me something different. I kept the 6 Plus until I had to switch carriers (6 Plus doesn't support 700mhz) and Apple offered something different with the X. When the X Plus comes out I will buy it and will likely keep that X Plus for 3-4 years again.

My guess is these unnamed sources are wrong. The X is doing fine as every year iPhones are easily available by around Mid-January and Apple lowers production requests. I saw an article like this for the 7 last year as well.

 

[bigjnyc]

It's earnings week

A blank envelope full of unmarked bills is dropped off on a chair at a coffee shop, the gentleman sitting next to the chair finishes his coffee, grabs the envelope and hastily exits the coffee shop... he walks a few blocks to his office where he works as a reputable tech industry analyst... Writes a few words about Apple and waits for the tech sites to run with it.... The price drops ahead of earnings.... Across town a Senior portfolio manager at a prominent hedge fund watches the action and instructs his traders to buy as much apple as possible once the price drops to a certain amount. After earnings when the price rises again these shares are dumped to unsuspecting public investors netting the hedge fund a huge profit...

wash. rinse. repeat

 

[tito2020]

LOWER THE PRICE!!!

sounds to me there starting to feel the hurting.

 

[CrzyP]

I’ll keep my Touch ID. Thanks

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Don't miss the phone jack at all.

Me neither but because that was the straw for me: I've not purchased an iDevice without a headphone jack. Clinging to aging hardware instead of adopting dongles or stepping down to bluetooth quality... for as long as I can hold out. I bet I'm not the only one.

 

[WannaGoMac]

Good. I hate OLED screens, with their headache-inducing blur while scrolling.

I also hate Face ID, with its stupid Notch and its inconvenience and its unknown eye safety.

Yearly upgrades used to be obvious improvements. Now Apple keeps “upgrading” their products with downgrades — the iPhone X and MacBook Pros are the biggest offenders.

lol wow you seem to hate and are negative on a lot of things a. Life of the party eh?

 

[5105973]

They priced my family out of the market and we're in the upper middle class demographic. No way would I ever pay more than 800 for a phone.

I am in the same demographic and choked on the price, too. I sent it back and got two phones for that price: an 8 Plus and a Pixel 2.

My issue is that the increase in price got me what, exactly? A new way of unlocking the phone that I found I liked, but not more than Touch ID. Cute camera tricks, but a camera that ultimately could not outperform a single lens Pixel 2 camera for still photos and gave me photos plagued with red-eye and blown out highlights.

For my extra money I also got muted monoaural sound recording on videos when competitors like Samsung and LG and HTC offer rich stereo recording ability and my Pixel 2 offers louder clearer monoaural sound.

I got a display that hurt my eyes thanks to pwm settings and did not give me the battery savings I had hoped for, because iOS and many apps still lacks a dark mode. I got design with alarmingly higher repair costs that necessitated a hugely expensive Apple Care cost and meant I can’t comfortably pass this phone on to the kids.

Still, I did love that X in many ways. I think it was the best iPhone I’d owned in a long time. I loved the screen to body ratio and the gesture based controls suited me well enough. It did take beautiful video and excellent zoomed photos thanks to OIS on the second lens. It was to me, a pretty phone with the glass and stainless steel accents.

I just decided the price of owning the best was too much for that category of device. I settled for a lesser offering spec-wise for a lot less money and I’ve been ridiculously happy with that choice. I am very happy Apple did offer consumers that choice. I love my 8 Plus.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Yet the stock is down 2% this morning. Wall Street is obsessed with the quarter immediately following the holiday quarter. It’s as if the holiday quarter doesn’t exist.

No Wall Street is always focused on the future. Investors can't buy the stock in the past and ride it on the back of the last quarter's record sales. They want to sell stock NOW- today. To do so, they need to convince investors that a stock is going to roar higher in the coming months.

Wall Street cared about the holiday quarter BEFORE the holiday quarter. That's how they sold a lot of AAPL to investors back in the Fall. Late January's investor needs stock favorable to run up AFTER today. While that could still be AAPL, supporting rumors like this can cast some doubt on whether they want to sell their investors this stock or any of the multitudes of others that could be spun today. Whether they sell AAPL or any other stock, the commissions to them are exactly the same.

 

[shareef777]

So the cost of the OLED panels (a $50 premium over the 8) forced them to increase the price by $300? That's some pretty impressive Apple math right there.

 

[WannaGoMac]

So the cost of the OLED panels (a $50 premium over the 8) forced them to increase the price by $300? That's some pretty impressive Apple math right there.

Suspect its that, the aluminum frame, the improved camera, Face ID technology being new, borderless screen, and yes making more money on the device. As a Plus user I viewed it as $200 more than a plus so it's not as high a jump but I get that an 8/7/6 series user would balk.

 

[neutralguy]

Or try to "notch" it up.

I would say the iPhoneX price was a notch above!

 

[Gix1k]

I spent $2470 on two phones, got them home and asked myself "WTF did you just do". Returned them.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

It's earnings week

A blank envelope full of unmarked bills is dropped off on a chair at a coffee shop, the gentleman sitting next to the chair finishes his coffee, grabs the envelope and hastily exits the coffee shop... he walks a few blocks to his office where he works as a reputable tech industry analyst... Writes a few words about Apple and waits for the tech sites to run with it.... The price drops ahead of earnings.... Across town a Senior portfolio manager at a prominent hedge fund watches the action and instructs his traders to buy as much apple as possible once the price drops to a certain amount. After earnings when the price rises again these shares are dumped to unsuspecting public investors netting the hedge fund a huge profit...

wash. rinse. repeat

Nice. So brown paper bag money only works to drive prices down? Most of the major institutions, most of the tech funds, many individual investors investing in tech, most everybody here are already invested in AAPL. I wonder if ANY of the MR writers are NOT owners of at least some AAPL either directly or indirectly. Especially those bigger players can have enormous investments in AAPL. Couldn't they brown paper bag money it the other way? In other words, we're already holding TONS of AAPL: bribe Eddie to tell his analyst friend to write a very bullish report about AAPL today. We want to drive the stock price already in our accounts higher.

Does stock manipulation happen? Of course it does. But it's not just a one-way game. For every bit of "drive it down so I can buy some cheaper" trick, there's a "puff it up so I can sell some higher" trick too. Where are you faulting the latter? Oh yeah, when the rumors are that way, threads fill with the genius of Apple, Apple products, and taking shots at those who questioned a higher price or removal of a headphone jack or fingerprint readers, etc.: "...but who makes the most profitable iPhone" and "$2XX money in the bank can't be wrong"

I agree with you that this rumor could certainly be just such a game. But so could the bull rumors too. Let's be as scrutinizing of the positives as we are the negatives. Else, we're more a participant in the game than some kind of watchdog.

 

[5105973]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s-jump-on-raised-growth-outlook-idUSKBN1FI0XU

Geezuz.
Just readthe ACTUAL news.

Well that just may indicate that Apple intends to put Face ID sensors on upcoming iPads, which is another recent rumor. It doesn’t necessarily negate this rumor we are discussing.

Edit, oops I didn’t see that @78Bandit had already posted this.

 

[MarkB786]

Cook and Ive need to know their limitations without Steve Jobs. They don't have the same ability to see the future and see what people need but don't yet know they need. Ive can design, but he lacks vision. Cook can manage the supply chain, but lacks vision.

 

[radiologyman]

I got X at full price and after using it decided it was not worth the price. I got it mainly for superior screen but turned out it was yellow tinted and pentile with similar effective resolution to previous phone. It was heavier and harder to use one handed than 6s. But when 6s dies I will get X because other iPhones will be even bigger

 

[Braderunner]

I’m glad that for the most part, people are saying no to these prices. I love the iPhone X, but come on. $1000 is ridiculous. Especially when they don’t even include a fast charger. At that price, it should actually include AirPods. I know AirPods are selling like crazy on their own, but the X would seem like a deal with them included.

 

[RicoRich196]

In this case, apparently there are not "somebody's" making up anything. Apparently, Apple had this many orders placed. Then, Apple cut that many orders down by 50%. It's not somebody guesses Apple is ordering X but Apple has just come in and actually ordered X/2. Apparently Apple is the player in both cases.

There are no incentives for the suppliers to report huge cuts in orders. They have owners and/or shareholders to answer to too. If anything, they'll want to puff up sales rumors unless they see that sales really are not there.

I realize that some of us feel some kind of obligation to spin this to the positive, so of course, we're going to try to imply it's all other players except Apple, but this is not fringe rumor speculation. Apparently X was ordered. Now it's X/2. The only player able to place such specific orders is the one wanting to buy the materials: Apple. It's not somebody like Samsung pretending to be Apple and ordering X only to have Apple to subsequently catch the villain and correct the order size.

Sure, there may be other possibilities going on here (if we want to play the defend game, how about: maybe Apple have brought on some other sources of these particular parts?). But this kind of info is somewhat far from my cousins, friends, barber was cutting the hair of a guy who knows a guy who dates a girl who's best friend works at Apple and the rumor is, unlikely as this sounds, that iPod socks have suddenly surged in sales again... and new colors are coming out on TUE.

And frankly: why do we find so much fault with the rumor machine, analysts, patents, competitors, even our fellow consumers when the rumor is negative about Apple but not when the rumors are positive? Why are they probably wrong only when the story sheds negative light toward Apple? If some of us believe what we are writing here, be sure to come back and punch the same holes in reliability of rumors when the news is very favorable about Apple. You never(?) see these same people doing that.

The issue is armchair analysts claiming the death of Apple based off [insert report/rumor]. If Apple halved the order, it could be because they will be producing a Plus size later this year and therefore don't need the same amount of 5.8" screens. You've got people here screaming "See! This is why I bought a Note 8" as if Samsung will not be releasing a Note 9 in the next 6 months. If Apple halving 5.8" OLED screen orders somehow validates someone's Android purchase more power to them, but it's really ridiculous to read it.