Apple makes up 50% of Foxconn's revenue, and 20% of TSMC's.
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iPhone Suppliers TSMC and Foxconn Report Strong November Revenue
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Apple makes up 50% of Foxconn's revenue, and 20% of TSMC's.
I’m pretty sure Global Foundries makes most of AMDs CPUs. Also, UMC make a significant chunk of the other chips you mentioned. You’re right that TSMC is something like 50% of the market share, but let’s not go overboard.
Apple is their largest client by volume and revenue and thus what affects Apple would dorectly affect TSMC.
But does this really tell us anything substantial? The recent rumors were specifically related to the XR in particular and tangentially to the XS. Does TSMC or Foxconn make substantially more revenue per unit when fabbing a chip or assembling an XR or XS versus an 8 or a 7?
It is possible these companies are churning out a load of cheaper devices and still getting paid about the same for their services. This report doesn't tell us anything more than the negative reports from other suppliers. There are many valid reasons why the iPhone XR sales could either exceed or fall short of expectations. Without confirmation from Apple it is all speculation. Which way you believe it goes depends more on your gut than on any facts as the information available is not conclusive.
Go back and re-read the report.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ders-amid-lower-than-expected-demand.2155834/
It says for Sept to Feb, apple previously asked the manufacturers to make a certain amount but then apple asked for a reduction in orders.
It is still Dec. We still have Jan and Feb to go. It is obvious that most iPhones would be sold during the release, most sales are not going to happen after Dec.
It’s hard for you to find a real explanation of why a lower quality phone is less money?
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All of those companies also used them last year. And figuring apple is by far their biggest customer, if apple was selling less phones their numbers would be down. Instead, they’re having a record month.
There is a 6 month wait just to get something fabbed at TSMC because they're in so much demand. Even Intel just recently (in the past month) started fabricating Chipsets and lower end Intel chips (Atoms etc) at TSMC to meet their own chip demand.
So no, this has nothing to do with Apple. And also NVIDIA is one of the largest customers TSMC has and they just launched new graphics cards for professionals and gamers, they will be seeing record demand right now as a result.
And as for Foxconn, it's the christmas buying period all the Consoles will see record sales and Foxconn assembles them. They also assemble the new Echo devices that just came out etc - There is certainly enough demand that Apple's unit sales going down will be displaced by increasing demand from other market segments.
If you want to figure out if iPhone sales are down you need to either look at a component supplier that only supplies for the iPhone or look at the sales number Apple always gives out, except when they stopped cause sales were down so they decided to hide the numbers.
Don't forget to factor in the reports that Samsung's OLED business has been on a roll lately. Speculation is that this is due to robust demands of Apple's OLED phone products.
If only Apple gave us the number of iPhones sold each quarter like they used to, it would definitely make things a lot less murky.
- iPhone released
- MacRumors: worst new iPhone ever, I liked my [insert iPhone from 3 years ago]. Tim Cook must resign!
- Reports of limited stock
- MacRumors: bash Apple for creating artificial demand
- Apple has enough stock and winds down the initial production rush
- News reports unnamed sources saying Apple has lowered orders due to low demand
- MacRumors: Price too high, Tim Cook must resign!
- Suppliers report good numbers
- MacRumors: Probably only because [other device from company x] is selling a lot this year.
- New year comes, news again reports unnamed sources saying Apple has lowered orders due to low demand
- MacRumors: Apple has no more innovation, Tim Cook must resign!
- Apple reports good numbers
- MacRumors: Grumble grumble
No it wouldn't. The last time Apple has (and will going forward) given unit sales numbers was back in November (for the Jul-Sept quarter). If nothing had changed with Apple unit sales reporting, they wouldn't have given the numbers for Oct-Dec quarter since it's still on going, and even then, it wouldn't be reported until February anyway.
Whether Apple reports numbers or not will not stop the BS that the analysts are peddling precisely because they are never held accountable for the accuracy or lack thereof.
Here's what we know from past history. Analysts publish investor notes indicating that Apple's iPhone sales for the Oct-Dec quarter are falling. The reasons they give will include a combination of the following terms: unnamed sources, component suppliers, channel checks, production orders, and retail analytics. The stock price typically falls as the same outlets (Bloomberg, Forbes, etc) publish articles and opinion pieces referring the report. The brokerage firm analysts will cut their outlook based on the media outlet reports and that results in another round of stock price drops.
Then come February, Apple announces record revenues (on flat unit sales) and record unit selling price. Stock recovers. Meanwhile, all of the AAPL investors that sold their shares at deflated prices scramble to get back in. Meanwhile the analyst's real customer (typically not you or me) had already bought their shares when the price cratered.
Repeat year after year.
I conclude this thought by saying that whether Apple reports unit sales or not, it's always been murky this time of year.
Going forward, we know that Apple will no longer report unit sales of iPhones. The same end-of-year story is playing out this year. I expect it to turn out the same as it does every February, with the exception of an Apple reported unit sales number, but don't worry, both IDC and Gartner will provide you an estimated unit sales number.
Spoiler Alert: Apple is going to report revenue and active installed base (customers). Apple is turning their focus from units to customers.
Those customers are going to be in excess of 1.3 billion, and they will be buying AirPods, Watches, Music, original programming, and whatever else Apple has in the pipeline. And they might buy a phone every now and again.
Privacy and support are 2 things but there are more and also
If you've never had an Iphone and used it with your mac, your watch, music software, music hardware,
etc and you only use it as a phone then there you go.
Most android users I know have no music loaded on their phones for example and they don't connect their phones to their pcs. Its just a cheap phone and thats all they care about..which is fine.
Buy the phone, car, house etc that you need.
Not sure why people get so worked up over this one item?
Apple doesn’t owe anyone numbers on their iPhones/units sold. And for the record, the competition doesn’t release their numbers either, so Why should Apple? Does it make anymore suspicious if Google or Samsung wouldn’t report their earnings? I don’t think it does.
The available data indicates Apple has sold more iPhone Xs Max than Google has sold every version of Pixel ever.
Apple has nothing to prove.
A Toyota is also half the price of a Mercedes. Doesn’t mean people are not buying the Mercedes. In the region where I am currently at, iphones are about 30% more expensive than the US MSRP, yet I see more people with iPhones than I would expect.
I disagree. Firstly Foxconn make the iPad, iPod, iPhone XS, iPhone XR, iPhone 8, iPhone 7, Macs etc - The iPhone XS and XR haven't sold as great, a few million less units. It's but a blip, it's not like the iPhone went from 35 million a quarter to zero. It's more like it went from 35 million to 30 million.
But at the same time Apple launched updated iPads, updated Macs and they launched three sizes of iPhone. There is still plenty to take over the lost revenue from iPhones.
But again if the iPhones were selling well Apple wouldn't hide the numbers from us. Just look at market share they're losing to Huawei, Oppo, Xiami etc - Chinese brands.
As for NVIDIA they produced more cards than they sold, meaning Foxconn saw more business. This was due to mining demand, NVIDIA significantly increased production to meet cryptomining demand and then the bubble burst leaving them with lots of inventory. That alone makes up for Foxconn's huge quarter but once again you're interpreting NVIDIA's numbers and Foxconn's numbers incorrectly.
NVIDIA took a loss on excess inventory, Foxconn made a gain since they were paid by NVIDIA to manufacture that excess inventory (as-well as other GPU OEM's like EVGA that they also make cards for).
My quote of 30 to 35 was just an example, I wasn't using real numbers. As for the activation, of course the iPhone XS Max is doing well, people wanted a bigger iPhone.
All my friends who had iPhone X's (who upgraded) bought iPhone XS Max's cause they wanted the Max size. I don't know anyone who went from iPhone X to iPhone XS.
But regardless, 20 million activations is disappointedly low.
Both Foxconn and TSMC requires capacity planing and lead time especially for Xmas production. It is the 2019 1H estimate that is concern when both of them has lowered forecast. Right now 10-20% drop is an industry wide format number.
[doublepost=1544591779][/doublepost]Where did that 20M iPhone XS Max number came from?
Deriving from Mixpanel Data, the iPhone Xs / Max are actually selling better than expected, even topping last year iPhone X in unit, expecting a total of 50M by the end of December. iPhone 8 with 10M, iPhone XR with 25M. 5M others.
Assuming a 10% off in base number that is roughly 81M Unit to 90M unit. So in terms of unit sales, they might actually beat least years figure or even a new record. ( Apple wont release number but they will likely say it is a new record )
The iPhone XS is clearly an unexpected success, I assume most in the industry were wrong in how iPhone X remain the most popular smartphone through out the year, many expect it in the first launch quarter, but not the next three. It seems we have the same pattern here. Many thought those who got X wont be upgrading to Xs and hence may be a smaller number of sales. Which turns out to be wrong too.
The outliner are iPhone 8, which increase 1% and I assume it is due to the lack of / upgrading from iPhone SE. And iPhone XR, which previously were projected up 100 to 120M unit through 2019, and should expect ~40M unit this quarter. So iPhone XR is indeed running short of expectation.
Tl;dr : iPhone Sales as a whole are doing fine. iPhone XR may be not.
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I wouldn't be surprised that this forum is full of stock market short-sellers.
Trade-ins also remove 2nd hand phones from the market, which lead to more future sales. No reselling or hand-me-downs to friends and relatives.
The 20million number comes from the Mixpanel data for Xs Max. The article states that the Max represents 2.81% of the installed user base. I think trombone used 715,000,000 as the estimated user base (I've seen that number from an analytical firm back in early 2017). 2.81% of 715million is roughly 20million Max units.
I use the Mixpanel data differently and come up with the following.
I'm using 675,000,000 as the estimated installed user base. Source - https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-installed-base-iphone-8-stopped-growing-2017-7
Xs - 2.26% of installed base
Max - 2.81%
Xr - 1.66%
This would imply unit sales of ...
Xs - 15 million
Max - 19 million
Xr - 11 million
Total - 45 million, through Dec 10th.
There's approximately 90 days in a quarter. Dec 10th is approximately day 70. So I factor in 1.28 for the days remaining in the year. The totals are now.
Xs - 19 million
Max - 24 million
Xr - 14 million
Total - 57 million
Here's where we get dicey. What percentage of new phones sold are the older ones?
I can use 80-20 or 70-30.
80-20 mix - 71.2 million iPhones
70-30 mix - 81.4 million iPhones
The last 2 Christmas quarters, Apple sold around 79 million both times. At an 80-20 mix, Apple disappoints dramatically. At the 70-30 mix, it's an all-time record.
Here's where more insight/data is required. Knowing the new sales of the older models would be very helpful in determining the "mix". The methodology I used locks in the unit sales of the new models, so the lower the mix, the more total unit sales.
Anyway, this is what I could put together in ten minutes. If I had more time, I could do a little more googling to see if there are indicators of 7/8 sales.
EDIT - usually around this time of year, CIRP releases a chart showing the breakdown of new iPhone sales by model (for US). Typically for the Dec quarter, the breakdown of the new models vs. the old models is between 60/40 to 70/30. I think the last time the mix was in the 80/20 range was in 2014 with the 6/6+.
Opinion - I think Apple will be fine with unit sales.
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