
Apple losing its supply chain mojo is a major threat - adventured
https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-10-23/apple-losing-its-supply-chain-mojo-is-a-major-threat
======
dep_b
If there's anything I'm worried about it's not the supply chain, that's Tim
Cook's speciality. We had similar stories about jet black iPhone 7's last
year. There's always something.

But please get iOS 11 back to iOS 10 in terms of battery performance because
I'm afraid the .1 release this year is not even the one you should go for if
you're conservative with upgrades.

We don't need a yearly release anymore, we need solid upgrades for both macOS
and the mobile OS's. Just release when it's ready.

~~~
rwc
And AirPods, which continue to be limited supply.

~~~
briandear
Really? Just bought some in at the Covent Garden Apple Store London on
Saturday. Saw plenty at the Palo Alto Apple store yesterday. Two weeks ago, at
the Aix-en-Provence Apple store, saw plenty there as well.

Who wants Air Pods and can’t get them? I decided to buy mine and they are
amazing.

~~~
boulos
You seem to have embarked on a world-wide tour of Apple retail stores... What
keeps bringing you in?

~~~
tedunangst
The store is almost always in a high traffic neighborhood you're likely to
visit. If walking by, why not walk in? They're usually interesting from an
architectural design perspective, at least compared to the Hollister store
next door.

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macintux
This looked suspiciously like a premature verdict with lots of assumptions
based on Apple not doing what an analyst says they should do, but there's no
doubt that Apple's in a tough spot.

They had to offer an expensive phone to get new technology out the door at a
reduced scale from a usual iPhone release, but now they're stuck with only one
supplier who can make quality displays (and of course that supplier is also
their main competition in phone hardware), and if the rumblings about the Face
ID hardware being hard to make reliably in quantities are true, this could be
an epic supply problem (for a company that knows well how painful epic supply
problems are).

And if people really are holding off on an iPhone 8 in hopes of an X, whew.
The good news for Apple is it's highly unlikely someone would go to Android
just because the X is hard to find.

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empath75
Not being able to produce your incredibly high profit margin product fast
enough to meet demand is an okay problem to have, as long as it doesn’t
persist. AirPods were back ordered for most of a year, but now they’re stocked
in stores.

~~~
stupidcar
I don't know, if I were an Apple investor (I'm not) I might be kind of pissed
that supposed supply chain geniuses missed out on billions in potential sales
because of entirely foreseeable and avoidable difficulties. Are regular
employees whose screw ups cost their employer massive sums given a second
chance? Why do we hold executives to a lower standard of performance than
those below them?

~~~
mcphage
> I might be kind of pissed that supposed supply chain geniuses missed out on
> billions in potential sales because of entirely foreseeable and avoidable
> difficulties.

Do you think someone else at Apple would have done a better job at getting 3rd
party companies to manufacturer their parts faster? Sometimes, things take a
while because they take a while, and burning through managers looking for
someone who can roll out babies in 6 months instead of 9 just means you burned
through all of your good managers.

------
_red
Not related to supply chain, but when my current iPhone 6s is paid off I will
probably look for 6s Plus. The lack of headphone jack really is a deal killer
for me...I have no desire to complicate my life by carrying, charging, and
managing multiple pieces of kit.

The "but it makes the iPhone water resistant" is weak argument that even if
true, could've had a simple manufacturing solution (ie. no need to have the
bore go straight into body of phone where electronics are, have the bore
cylinder sealed with only wiring running to logic board).

Tim Cook, much like Steve Balmer, is a brilliant operations guy that can make
minute adjustments to product lineup to produce all sorts of incremental once-
off sales. However, they both lacked a fundamental "product vision" that
resulted in tactical gains and strategic losses. Apple once again needs a
product visionary.

~~~
origami777
This is where the legend of Steve Jobs is validated. To see the progressive
decline in quality of hardware, software, and overall experience leads one to
believe that yes indeed it was Jobs responsible for what we came to know as
apple quality. It’s sad it’s happenig. Like a slow mo accident. While they’re
focused on selling iCloud my phone storage is magically filling up even when I
delete gigs of data and load nothing more.

~~~
_red
To be honest, I didn't even watch the last product launch. I almost thought it
was a mistake when I checked the website later that day and saw both 8 and X
iPhones? What a way to confuse your market.

Right now on apple.com you can buy the SE, 6, 7, 8, and X from their website.
Talk about a cluttered, friction inducing decision.

~~~
martinp
And this is likely the reason for the reportedly low sales of the 8. I was
surprised when they announced both at the fall event as it seemed obvious the
X would cannibalize sales of the 8.

The iPhone is already a expensive premium phone, why bother with incremental
changes of the 8 when the cool and shiny X is right around the corner.

It's also strange to me how they offer two new phones with different feature
sets. Usually when Apple introduces a new device with a controversial change
(e.g. USB-C only on the 2016 MacBook Pro), they don't offer a updated device
without that change. It can be perceived as a lack of faith in the new
product.

~~~
rz2k
This year seems to have been about price increases across the range of
products. The iPhone X is more expensive, and a lot more expensive than
previous premium iPhones if you get sensible amounts of storage.

The base model of the MacBook Pro is about the same price as the one in 2016,
but it has 128GB rather than 256GB of storage. The 256GB model is now a couple
hundred dollars more expensive than last years.

Who else is able to _increase_ prices in technology? In spite of the
complaints about their products, for people who think they are good enough and
don’t think what competitors have to offer is good enough (in terms of
frustrations rather than in terms of features/price) there aren’t
alternatives, and Apple has a lot of pricing power.

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Alex3917
I think the reasons the new phones aren't selling is that:

\- Anyone who already has a 6S or later can save money by not buying a new
phone. Before this year, the way phone contracts worked is that you were
paying for a new phone whether you bought one or not, so it would never make
sense not to buy one.

\- No B71 or 4x4 MIMO support, meaning that next year's phones are going to be
the ones you actually want, whereas these phones don't really offer any
advantages over the 6S.

So unless you dropped your phone or something anyway, I don't really see any
compelling reason to upgrade.

~~~
viraptor
> No B71 or 4x4 MIMO support

I'm not sure a statistically relevant number of people care or even know about
those technologies.

~~~
Alex3917
Doesn’t matter. If Tim Cook had come on stage and said that the phones this
year were going to get much better reception, and data speeds would be much
faster, then the phones would be selling. But instead the pitch was that the
graphics chip was 30% better or whatever, which no one cares about.

Just wait until next year, we’ll see more sales after these features are
added.

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thisisit
This article is badly written and tangential. It starts off with weak monthly
sales charts of TSMC, Hon Hai and Largan Precision before turning to say well
the issue is OLED and Samsung. The same arguments are made again towards the
end of article.

Shortage of OLED has been a known variable for a long time. Back in 2010, I
bought a cheap ZTE phone released in UK as Orange San Francisco. Because of
the OLED shortage, the phone had two variations in UK - the OLED one and TFT
one. People had to look for special serial numbers to get the OLED model.

------
moogly
"Major threat"?

~~~
nihonde
This is just another cycle in the routine where an analyst predicts a dire
outcome for Apple to put some pressure on the share price, so the trading desk
can swoop in for the inevitable pop when the doom-and-gloom prediction turns
out to be completely wrong. Everyone knows that the name of the game is
betting against these dumb reports.

~~~
pducks32
You would make a great Finance reporter or even an economist.

