See how the numbers change from the share doom and gloom from just last time this was reported? Doesn't look so bad now, does it?
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iPhone X Was One of the Top Three Best-Selling Smartphones in December 2017 Across Five Markets
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And let's not forget that even with production cut in half that is still a lot more than any other single phone sold. Samsung doesn't sell 20 million of any model.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Here we go again. The implied bad is suspect/stock manipulation/sleaze. But hey look at China (good)- that part is absolutely true. 
Why is the good so readily accepted as factual and the bad suspect/conspiracy/manipulation? That's a rhetorical question- I know already... just like patents and/or the patent system is broken and needs reformed when some patent is working against Apple but fine for protecting intellectual capital when it works for Apple.
Yes, but that seems like a make lemons-into-lemonade spin answer. Here's why: if those production cut orders are true, it's Apple that had the higher orders in place and only Apple that cut the orders in half. It's not stock manipulators putting in orders too high and Apple correcting them. So Apple had projected orders of X and then Apple was adjusting orders down to X/2. There's no other players in that equation to be manipulating the order volume. The suppliers- if anything- are motivated to puff up the order volume to please their shareholders. They have no reason to manipulate their order volume down and make their own forecasts look bad.
As to "but don't orders get cut every year" to imply after the robust holiday orders will be lower. Of course, orders will be lower after the holiday quarter- THAT IS NORMAL. But this is not cutting X down from a comparison with orders to build enough for holiday-season sales. This is cutting orders for post holiday production. In other words, this is not, "we needed to produce 60 units for the busy holiday season and now need to produce only 30 units for the quarter after the holiday season." This is "we had forecasted we would need to produce 30 for the new quarter but we only need to produce 15."
More simply: we keep trying to spin this as normal because orders get cut every year after the holiday season. However, if that's the case, why does Apple keep making the same mistake every year of having too many ordered after the holiday season? Isn't Apple smart enough to know they'll sell less units after the holiday season? Assuming so, they could have better forecasted their orders and avoided the implied bad news already by learning this over 10 holiday seasons and not over-ordering after the holiday season such that they have to formally cut orders.
We're pointing out that this happens every year but not realizing that makes it look like Apple can't notice that and fix the mistake of over-ordering every year. Each time we try to spin that as normal, we're basically calling the supply-chain king stupid for not being able to anticipate that orders will be less after the holiday quarter. Our lemonade (spin) is sour if we can't see that.
Why is the good so readily accepted as factual and the bad suspect/conspiracy/manipulation? That's a rhetorical question- I know already... just like patents and/or the patent system is broken and needs reformed when some patent is working against Apple but fine for protecting intellectual capital when it works for Apple.Yes, but that seems like a make lemons-into-lemonade spin answer. Here's why: if those production cut orders are true, it's Apple that had the higher orders in place and only Apple that cut the orders in half. It's not stock manipulators putting in orders too high and Apple correcting them. So Apple had projected orders of X and then Apple was adjusting orders down to X/2. There's no other players in that equation to be manipulating the order volume. The suppliers- if anything- are motivated to puff up the order volume to please their shareholders. They have no reason to manipulate their order volume down and make their own forecasts look bad.
As to "but don't orders get cut every year" to imply after the robust holiday orders will be lower. Of course, orders will be lower after the holiday quarter- THAT IS NORMAL. But this is not cutting X down from a comparison with orders to build enough for holiday-season sales. This is cutting orders for post holiday production. In other words, this is not, "we needed to produce 60 units for the busy holiday season and now need to produce only 30 units for the quarter after the holiday season." This is "we had forecasted we would need to produce 30 for the new quarter but we only need to produce 15."
More simply: we keep trying to spin this as normal because orders get cut every year after the holiday season. However, if that's the case, why does Apple keep making the same mistake every year of having too many ordered after the holiday season? Isn't Apple smart enough to know they'll sell less units after the holiday season? Assuming so, they could have better forecasted their orders and avoided the implied bad news already by learning this over 10 holiday seasons and not over-ordering after the holiday season such that they have to formally cut orders.
We're pointing out that this happens every year but not realizing that makes it look like Apple can't notice that and fix the mistake of over-ordering every year. Each time we try to spin that as normal, we're basically calling the supply-chain king stupid for not being able to anticipate that orders will be less after the holiday quarter. Our lemonade (spin) is sour if we can't see that.
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On CNBC this morning Jim Cramer said the sell side analysts are setting Apple up to fail. They’ve already declared Q2 a disaster even though Apple hasn’t provided any guidance.
one brand but multiple models.
Must be nice to have $2,000+ to put toward a PHONE.
Just give me a phone that will let me talk to whomever I need and / or communicate via texts.
OK, did I miss something? The article shows charts of "OS" sales. Not individual device Sales. So, tell me know, they know it's the iPhone X and not the iPhone 8/8+ or iPhone 7/7+ sales. Or, is it a combination of all of them? Yesterday, there was all kinds of press about Apple cutting production of the X by 50% because of less than expected sales of the device. So, tell me, now did this article come to the conclusion it was the X that was responsible for the OS sales alone?
History has proven this assumption to be primarily true. Apple's advertising targets that coveted 18-34 yr old demographic. Outside of pharmaceuticals and insurance, you're really not in a valued demographic.
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The article didn't come to that conclusion. You did.
Nothing in the article implies what you think it does.
Really, because the TITLE SAYS it ALLThe article didn't come to that conclusion. You did.
iPhone X Was One of the Top Three Best-Selling Smartphones in December 2017 Across Five Markets
I agree with this! I love my iPhone X it’s easily the best iPhone they have done so far, Face ID is just brilliant I don’t even miss Touch ID or the home button, the OLED HDR display is great for watching HDR movies on (Wonder Woman and Deadpool look great) all round a brilliant phone.
What were the top selling phone models? Saying the iPhone X was in the top three lacks context. Here's a quote from the same company regarding November activity. "In the USA, the iPhone X was outsold by the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus in the month of November but did round off the top three best-selling models for the month, easily beating the top Samsung model, the Galaxy S8, which is in sixth position."
I wonder if the 8, 8 Plus, or even the 7 outsold the X in December. It is a good phone but the price is holding it back. Assuming the average of all the sales rumors are true the iPhone X accounted for about 20% of all iPhone sales. That would still be less than 20 million units sold with supply able to satisfy demand by the second week of December.
Reports can look any way you want to spin the headline. While this one seems positive, based on the initial expectations of 35 - 40 million devices sold in the first quarter the iPhone X should have been far-and-away the number one selling device for the months of November and December.
I wonder if the 8, 8 Plus, or even the 7 outsold the X in December. It is a good phone but the price is holding it back. Assuming the average of all the sales rumors are true the iPhone X accounted for about 20% of all iPhone sales. That would still be less than 20 million units sold with supply able to satisfy demand by the second week of December.
Reports can look any way you want to spin the headline. While this one seems positive, based on the initial expectations of 35 - 40 million devices sold in the first quarter the iPhone X should have been far-and-away the number one selling device for the months of November and December.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
First, why do YOU care so much?
Second, you do know that the jobs of Wall Street is to (mostly) sell stocks. They can't wait for a very secretive company to offer guidance. They have to try to offer their clients whatever they can learn about any stock to help drive buy & sell calls. They can't make a nickel on "hold" ("until we occasionally get official word from Apple"). They make money by trying to get money moving in and out of stocks TODAY. And again, TOMORROW.
Furthermore, they do not worship any one company. To them a stock is a stock. They are not married to AAPL or any other company. So they don't care about propping up or beating down any stock- just how much of somebody's stock they can move today. If AAPL seems sellable to investors, they'll sell it. If something else seems more sellable, they'll sell it. That's their job... not to twist/contort/make up/etc any message to always favor any single stock such that 100% of the time, the advice is only to buy or hold that one stock (because it is a special, supremely-great company that is a cut above all others in all things).
If AAPLs prospects look very good, they can get a lot of their clients to buy more. If AAPL's prospects look not-so-good, there are plenty of other stocks to push to their clients. They just want the commissions. It doesn't matter what Apple fans think of a single stock. Brokers can't afford to be irrational fans of ANY stock.
None of that means that no players manipulate stocks. Of course they do. But they don't pick any one stock and focus on only manipulating it. In other words, there is not huge conspiracy to only manipulate AAPL. Bad news offers an opportunity to perhaps over-push a stock price down (for a better buy). Good news offers the reverse (for a better sell). But they don't zero in on just AAPL for such shenanigans. Any stock will do where the most bucks seem to be able to be made on any given day.
Lastly, posts here trying to rally the troops because Wall Street is out to get AAPL can have no effect on AAPL if that were true. There's not enough of us here to make a difference whether we allow ourselves to be manipulated to sell or staunchly hold or buy more to try to put it to the evil shysters trying to manipulate the market.
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Please allow me a little bit of snark: A title is not an article.
That title doesn't imply what you seem to think it does either. To be fair, the article does run two parallel subjects simultaneously. It could be easy to confuse the two. One subject is the X being Top 3 in Sales. The other subject is OS market share. At no point in the article do they imply the entire market share consists of iPhone X. That title doesn't imply it either.
Without numbers and context, the iPhone 8 could have been the best seller and the iPhone 7 could have been the 2nd best seller.
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Better read it again. I bet it's talking about yesterday's information implying that projected orders were cut in half, not (past) sales. If WSJ is saying that holiday sales were half of expectations, that's an entirely different story.
So many of us seem to be trying to see a mismatch from comments about the past (holiday, probably record, and probably all-time record sales) and post-holiday forecasted orders of components.
Take it to the extreme: Suppose that Apple had sold every single person on the planet an X for Christmas. Since everyone has one, no one is likely to buy one in the quarter after Christmas, so Apple cuts their orders to zero. That would be a way for there to be a maximum possible sales record of X that makes perfect sense with reports of Apple cutting future orders to nill because everybody has one. Both stories would make perfect sense with no seeming conflict.
In this, we are trying to confuse- or are confused- about spectacular recent past sales and an apparent cut in the forecast of future sales based upon a cut in continuing to make as many as originally planned. That's 2 very different things.
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None of this really matters - it's the past. AAPL has been taking a beating because of the 50% production reduction going forward. Thursday will give us the true picture of what is actually happing with regards to iPhone X's growth prospects. iPhone X could have sold initially like a Godzilla taking Tokyo, and looks like it did. But it was a new phone and lots of early adopters.
The relevant question now is, what's next for X? Is it stalled or not? Only Apple can say for sure, and while Apple does not give sales data for individual products, it will get questions, and we'll see how those questions are finessed.
The relevant question now is, what's next for X? Is it stalled or not? Only Apple can say for sure, and while Apple does not give sales data for individual products, it will get questions, and we'll see how those questions are finessed.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Yes, this whole bad potential scenario is going to be played out- or not- based NOT on how well Apple did in the last quarter but what they forecast going forward. Contrary to popular thinking- or delusions- Wall Street is always about the future, never the past.
Else, Apple sold hundreds of millions of iPods in the past. Buy APPL now because of that fact.
Else, Apple sold hundreds of millions of iPods in the past. Buy APPL now because of that fact.
One could argue about the defenders of FaceID as well. Great, it works to absolute perfection for you. Guess what, many others don't have that luck.
FaceID has generally been OK with me. However, compared to TouchID, it's crap. TouchID would work 99.999% of the time (only if my finger was dirty/wet would it give me issues). I simply put my finger on the sensor and my phone is unlocked. FaceID, not so much. If I'm multitasking and doing something else, it's more convoluted to unlock faceID. You have to stop looking at what ever you're looking at, stare at the phone, and have to either tap the phone anyway or move it to wake it, once it's unlocked, you can then go back to looking at what you were working on. Maybe most people don't go back and forth between their phone and anything else, but some of us are mentally capable of focusing on more then one thing at once.
Remember how quickly Apple got their production runs "caught up". Makes sense now.... Shipping estimates were 6+ weeks out but very, very quickly started dropping and within ~2 weeks, those estimates were often cut in half. Their manufacturing facilities will get faster over time, but get real ! They aren't getting that much faster in a matter of a couple of weeks !
Please allow me a little bit of snark: A title is not an article.
That title doesn't imply what you seem to think it does. To be fair, the article does run two parallel subjects simultaneously. It could be easy to confuse the two. One subject is the X being Top 3 in Sales. The other subject is OS market share. At no point in the article do they imply the entire market share consists of iPhone X. That title doesn't imply it either.
Without numbers and context, the iPhone 8 could have been the best seller and the iPhone 7 could have been the 2nd best seller.
Ok, I can see what you are saying. So, that's why my original question. First the title/article talks about iPhone X being top X. then they show OS sales, yes, I was implying, based on the data given. But, has Apple ever given out real device sale numbers?
What do you think would be today's culturally equivalent depiction of the PC-guy vs. Mac-guy comparison, if applied to a hypothetical Apple vs. Android match-up today?
They need to do market share broken down by price segment. Most Android phones sold are low-end so it’s pointless to compare total Android sales against the iPhone.
At the high end the iPhone slaughters everyone else in sales.