Apple's Suppliers Projecting Weak Demand for iPhone 7 Due to 'Lack of Innovation'

[routine_analyst]

Maybe? This is something people have been doing for awhile now. I seem to know two camps here though: those who want the latest/greatest, then the slightly older generation who wouldn't give a rip about the newest technology/features (i.e. My mom).

I think the first group you mention is evolving due to a few factors... maturing out of the pop scene run by materialism and cool just by age... and the second factor being innovation. Why buy a phone that looks identical to the one I have with a tiny speed increase and a "pinch and pop" feature when I can do absolutely everything else just fine? I had every single revision of the iPhone up until the iPhone 6 plus. The battery is starting to annoy me second only to ATT's crap bandwidth limitations on my "unlimited plan" that I'll jump for an iPhone 7 Plus on T-Mobile.

 

[Lesser Evets]

Apple has 99 problems, and this IS one...

 

[Michael Scrip]

Wow. All those companies expecting slowdowns because of the iPhone.

I guess the world really DOES revolve around the iPhone, if an entire component industry rises and falls with the sales of the iPhone.

Well yeah... Apple orders enough parts to build over 200 million iPhones a year.

Suppliers are thrilled to have Apple as a client... and they also feel the pain of fewer orders, lower demand, etc.

 

[crashoverride77]

My bottom line thoughts. If the iPhone 7 is a flop due to lack of innovation, that will be Tim Cooks last release.

Obviously, we don't know enough about the 7 yet or iOS10 to know what the reality is, but I think there will be more than just a few tweaks. The 6s was tweaks and I would hope Apple knows they need major advancements now to stay relevant.

Can't wait to hear what' coming at the WWDC... and for goodness sake... give us new laptops!

Advancements such as Touch ID and 3D Touch that everybody is desperately trying to copy?

 

[jujufreeze]

It's like TC and Co. are slowly sucking the soul out of Apple.

 

[dk001]

Lack of innovation????

• First to market with pressure-sensitive capacitive touch screen
• First to market with phone made of 7000-series military-grade aluminium
• First to market with SSD NAND flash controller for laptop-class R/W storage performance
• Still best-in-class fingerprint reader that cannot be matched for accuracy, response time, and security of any other reader
• Still best-in-class SoC that with only dual cores puts 8-core Droids to shame in both single and multi-core performance
• Most stable OS on mobile
• Best-in-class update rollout times for OS

I could keep going, but you catch my drift...
...
Look above to quantify just how much INNOVATION the iPhone actually HAS in relation to the competition...

Actually no. Innovation is great if it is bug free and usable.
Many things you list came as a result of a defect or a feature that usually did not kick off. True innovation or evolutionary growth? Your drift has a flat or two.

• 7000-series - remember bendable?
• Fingerprint reader - The one on my former Note 5 was pretty awesome and the one on the Nexus 6P is actually more usable than the one on my 6S+
• What good is the speed from SOC/Core if the user GUI is deliberately slowed down with animations? Using the Accessibility bug makes my 6S+ feel as quick as my Nexus 6P. Without it it feels slooooowwwwww.
• Using both, I will definitively state that the Nexus 6P running Android 6 is far more stable than my iPhone 6S+ running iOS 9. It used to be the other way around.
• Best in class roll-out? Apples vs. Oranges. Apple doesn't announce till its ready to roll out and then spends a myriad of updates fixing the beta-style bugs. Android announces it is coming, then when "launched" it is quickly available on Nexus.

We can point / counter-point all day long. True usable innovation has been missing from Apple for a while now. We, as users, keep hoping for some and are waiting quasi-patiently. Let's not beat a dead horse. this topic has far too many whip marks. I'll wait till the actual announcements. Hoping.
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How is it? I'm thinking about trying out a Nexus phone later this year.

Been using a Nexus 6P as part of a Google Fi test run. It is a seriously good piece of hardware and Android 6 is great.
Do some research on it. I have been very pleased. Even though I still use both

 

[macfacts]

Lack of innovation????

• First to market with pressure-sensitive capacitive touch screen
• First to market with phone made of 7000-series military-grade aluminium
• First to market with SSD NAND flash controller for laptop-class R/W storage performance
• Still best-in-class fingerprint reader that cannot be matched for accuracy, response time, and security of any other reader
• Still best-in-class SoC that with only dual cores puts 8-core Droids to shame in both single and multi-core performance
• Most stable OS on mobile
• Best-in-class update rollout times for OS

I could keep going, but you catch my drift......

You just described the iPhone 6s+. What reason is there for someone to get the iPhone 7?

 

[v0lume4]

Been using a Nexus 6P as part of a Google Fi test run. It is a seriously good piece of hardware and Android 6 is great.
Do some research on it. I have been very pleased. Even though I still use both

I will! Waiting to see Apple's and Google's offerings later this year. However, it seems that we already know what the iPhone 7 will look like. Unless Apple has some killer software later this year, then I'll definitely try Android. Trying Android will be fun, at least for one phone cycle.

 

[Wowereit]

I'm always recommending to try other options.
Even if you don't end up keeping it, you've made some experience with the OS 80% of people are using, who knows maybe you will need it at some point.
Additionally it helps to set things into perspective.

 

[v0lume4]

I'm always recommending to try other options.
Even if you don't end up keeping it, you've made some experience with the OS 80% of people are using, who knows maybe you will need it at some point.
Additionally it helps to set things into perspective.

Reminds me of my coworker that swears that the iPhone and Macs are inferior. Then I find out that he's never used a Mac or an iPhone.

 

[chromite]

Incremental updates, while sucking all the colour out of the world.

Get some perspective, man. If Apple's products are causing depression for you then maybe you should take a step back and do a lil' reevaluation of your life.

 

[wovel]

Anyone remember the negative press for getting rid of the 30-pin connector? Getting rid of the headphone jack would cause far more negative press because it is the industry standard on absolutely everything. That alone could cause a significant fall in sales in my opinion.

Except there was no loss of sales with the loss of the 30 pin connector...
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Reminds me of my coworker that swears that the iPhone and Macs are inferior. Then I find out that he's never used a Mac or an iPhone.

Most of the complainers on here have never used one either. Never have and never would. There is a word for it, but it is not allowed here.

 

[Col4bin]

Its probably untrue and they are saying this to generate hype, and to create the illusion of scarcity.
It probably will be a great phone, dual camera, maybe 4k recording, possibly 4k screen, pretty amazing stuff. Like I said, this is probably an artificial marketing ploy

Seems like a bizarre PR stunt to me. Plus, it would be completely unlike Apple to go this route as a market leader.
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If the iPhone 7 rumors are true, I hope it at least comes with a price drop.

Haha, good one! Don't count on it.
[doublepost=1463026069][/doublepost]

Tim Cook's legacy in one article title.
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Even if Apple releases the 7 with nothing new, it's still better than an Android.

Not true anymore. Go try a Nexus 5X or 6P or latest Samsung device. Hardware aside, Android and iOS have reached a level of parity. I use both devices/platforms daily and they really are equal in terms of consistent useability and reliability.

 

[Jimmy Bubbles]

I think the first group you mention is evolving due to a few factors... maturing out of the pop scene run by materialism and cool just by age... and the second factor being innovation. Why buy a phone that looks identical to the one I have with a tiny speed increase and a "pinch and pop" feature when I can do absolutely everything else just fine? I had every single revision of the iPhone up until the iPhone 6 plus. The battery is starting to annoy me second only to ATT's crap bandwidth limitations on my "unlimited plan" that I'll jump for an iPhone 7 Plus on T-Mobile.

I see your point there and I actually had been upgrading to every version, until the 5s. At that point, I'd decided to stay on the "S train" so-to-speak. Also, being an ATT customer myself, I'm honestly glad that I made the move from that "unlimited plan" to a limited one. I'm on a family plan, and amongst 3 of us, we have 15 GBs to share.
Although, not everyone sees the value in 3D Touch, I've truly loved the quickness it allows me to navigate around on my iPhone 6s+. So I'm not sure if you've gotten to try out 3D Touch in a real use case scenario, but now that I have, I don't know how I've done without it.

 

[jamesrick80]

Apple didn't have any groundbreaking features last year either. I still hope people don't believe 3D touch was innovative or groundbreaking since no one uses it except the rare few. The best thing apple has given us lately are the iPad pros (adult and baby ).... thank goodness for the pencil and smart keyboard.

 

[neongrau]

Can't really believe that they would release such a boring thing and call it iPhone7. i'll happily stick to my 6 for another year if that really happens. Not going to ditch my spare pair of headbuds for an audio-jack lobotomized 6s in a casing that has just a tiny bit little less of that cheap looking grey plastic strip on the back that will discolor after a few months anyway. At 99.9999% of the time i exclusively look at the front of my phone.

And the silly exclusive higher specs on the plus . I want the plus' features in the smaller form.

 

[petsk]

I hope we see a price drop at least. Prices have fallen on smartphones but the iPhone get more expensive for each year.

 

[super chimp]

It seems like every update has problems now (iOS). Wifi won't connect suddenly.. Or cellular signal will go away, or whatever. It's gotten so bad Apple has had to pull the software updates to fix them. It's like Apple doesn't even test iOS before releasing it.

I have no issue with connecting to wifi on my iPhone?

 

[mrbyu]

I have been holding onto my iPhone 5 for almost 4 years now (I know, sounds crazy, but it somehow... does its job).
I am not saying that anyone has the right to demand that Apple comes up with something radically new every 2 years... who made that rule anyway? If you think about it, the first iPhone's form factor remained also basically unchanged for 3 years (there wasn't that much of a difference between the 2G and the 3G).
But still, I don't feel like spending a fortune on this...
I think I will just be getting a cool little iPhone SE for the fraction of the price and see what next year brings.

 

[flottenheimer]

My guess is that the iPhone 7 is not going to be about the phone.
It is going to be all about the earphones.

New, redesigned, much better audio quality. Possibly even wireless.

 

[Ed217]

While innovation may be a factor, there are more basic issues at play here:

1. Market is becoming saturated. Most folks already have a smartphone that is "good enough"
2. Cost models have changed. Pricing will cause some to hesitate
3. Software and apps may offer more increased utility than hardware

I will get a 7, have a 6 today. I tend to get every other one. What I would like are more iOS API options to open up what is already in place.

Siri is a good example. I rarely use it as it tends to be too limited and unreliable. If I try to send a text longer than 3-4 words, I will have to go back and correct at least one word. My options for using Siri inside apps are mostly non existent.

I recently purchased an Amazon Echo. In only a couple of days it became FAR more useful and integrated than Siri. Combine it with IFTTT and the range of things that one can do is quite impressive. I can say "trigger find my wife" and a few moments later my iPhone will speak and tell me her exact physical location and address. Yesterday I got the app Lexi, which brings most of those same Echo features directly to my phone.

I think Apple missed some opportunities by not buying DirecTV (AT&T did) and Micros (Oracle did). The second would have opened up a lot of options for iPad use in POS in countless locations and business areas. I expect there are similar examples.

 

[maflynn]

I'd say if the iPhone 7 is just a minor update to the camera, processor etc. Yeah it will definitely have weak demand.

I think the fact that Carriers have largely stopped subsidies here in the US, is also exacerbating the situation as people are less likely to shell out 700+ dollars every other year. I'm certainly not going to that.

 

[Michael Scrip]

I think the fact that Carriers have largely stopped subsidies here in the US, is also exacerbating the situation as people are less likely to shell out 700+ dollars every other year. I'm certainly not going to that.

You don't have to shell out $700+ just because subsidies are gone.

The carriers have switched to payment plans.

Subsidies were just another name for a payment plan anyway. You made a $199 down-payment... and the rest of the cost of the phone was spread out over 24 months. Subsidies were created specifically so you wouldn't have to pay $700+ up-front.

And now payment plans do the same thing.

You didn't have to pay $700+ then... and you don't now either.

I didn't... I have a 64GB iPhone 6S+ and I did NOT have to pay the $849 retail price up-front. Weird, huh.

The carriers have always done their best to make it easy to get a new phone without shelling out $700+

Old price tags:
$199
$99
$0

(but they didn't tell you that you were actually paying the remainder yourself)

New price tags:
$27/month
$23/month
$17/month

So again... people don't have to spend $700+ for an iPhone.

 

[maflynn]

You don't have to shell out $700+ just because subsidies are gone.

I understand, but I prefer not taking out loans or adding to my debt. In the end, you are still shelling out 700 dollars its just that you're financing it.

 

[I7guy]

I hope we see a price drop at least. Prices have fallen on smartphones but the iPhone get more expensive for each year.

What smartphone prices have fallen? Galaxy s7 edge?