
Apple tells suppliers to produce 10% fewer new iPhones - sohkamyung
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Exclusive-Apple-tells-suppliers-to-produce-10-fewer-new-iPhones
======
CoolGuySteve
Cue all the armchair product strategists coming in to tell us all the mistakes
Apple made in it's product line up, or $29 batteries, or some other bullshit.

Look, the reason iPhone sales are slipping is because of China's recent poor
economic performance. Apple said EXACTLY that in their last earnings guidance:

> While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not
> foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater
> China. In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100
> percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater
> China across iPhone, Mac and iPad.

( [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-
cook-...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-
apple-investors/) )

Samsung's earnings have also been hit by similar factors:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-07/samsung-m...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-07/samsung-
misses-profit-estimates-as-chip-sector-weakens)

A slowdown in China this big is actually huge news so I'm surprised so many
people are missing the forest for the trees. It means less foreign investment
capital will be coming to the West and might potentially signal another global
recession.

~~~
chewbaxxa
Decreasing sales in China may also indicate increasing preference for domestic
brands such as Huawei and Xiaomi. Ask most westerners and they have probably
never heard of these brands but in China they may actually be more desirable.

~~~
Pimpus
These brands are quite well known in Europe, but not in a good way. When my
Matebook stopped charging after two months people called me dumb for buying a
Huawei product. Just an anecdote.

I likewise have Xiaoimi products and their Mi Home app for smart home products
is awful and a far cry from Apple's polish.

~~~
a11595
Completely agree. Also, lenovo phones are also well known in Europe, not in a
good way. the dual-sim one I had while living in Kiev was dirt cheap, plastic
screen, as fast as the samsungs out at that time but about 2mm thicker. that
plastic screen was awesome and saved me many replacements.

the problem with the chinese crap, not just phones but TVs, pads, whatever, is
they literally dump a bunch of decent hardware in there, and just stop. no QA,
no support, nothing you can find online - so in a few months when any little
thing breaks, or there's no way to fix an annoying feature, it goes in the
trash.

lots of stories, but here's a couple. got a chinese phone so I never have to
put a chinese sim into my real phone. pretty popular in china, good specs.
root it and put a non-chinese OS? nothing, and I've searched in chinese.

About 4 years ago got a xiaoimi tablet. quad core, 2GB ram, mini-hdmi output,
$70 on amazon. first month perfect. then - wifi started turning off after
about 5min, only fixed by a reboot. no support, no documentation, nothing on
forums - and it was sold for about 3 months and then they started selling some
identical crap with a different model#. seriously, I have no problem paying
$1-2k for a phone or pad. What I don't want is useless crap that wastes days
of time and gets me pissed off so I can't fall asleep, a year later on a
Tuesday.

The thing is, the Chinese culture is used to half-working crap, and they think
it's normal. They pump shit out of the sewers, boil it, then use the oil
floating on top to dilute cooking oil. At most restaurants. Phone has awkward
interface, security holes, and 1 security update after release? who cares -
your thoughts are on rent in a dirty apartment and food. If you order your
steak medium - it's well done, because yes, they don't toss the beef when it
goes bad - they serve it to you, everywhere.

Buildings use a bunch more cement and reinforcement than normal countries.
Why? Because the construction workers eyeball all measurements and just don't
care - if you don't account for error, it'll collapse.

Not knocking on the Chinese race (my wife is Chinese), but I am knocking their
culture. Zero attention to detail, zero cares, zero pride in what you do. It
works there, because life is shitty and you don't care about a UI bug when
you're broke, there's no law, and an oppressive police force that puts you in
jail to harvest your organs for the rich.

~~~
markdown
> They pump shit out of the sewers, boil it, then use the oil floating on top
> to dilute cooking oil. ____At most restaurants. __ __

Citation needed. My understanding was that there are some crooks producing the
sewer oil, but that it 's used as an adulterant in cooking oil and the
restaurants aren't knowingly cooking in sewer oil.

~~~
tinus_hn
> Citation needed

This is not Wikipedia.

~~~
robjan
It's not Wikipedia, but if you are going to judge a whole culture by one news
story you had better proove that the problem is widespread

~~~
tinus_hn
You can certainly request a source if you disagree with the statement but it
is not helpful to shout ‘citation needed’ as if this is an encyclopedia and
everything you post needs references. You could say ‘I don’t think that is
true, do you have references for that?’

------
GeekyBear
Apple has announced that their products are selling fine outside of China.

Samsung warned on their China demand yesterday.

>Samsung follows Apple warning, says Q4 profit likely sank 29% on weak China
demand

[https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-
markets/sams...](https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-
markets/samsung-follows-apple-warning-says-q4-profit-likely-fell-29-on-weak-
china)

We've known that Chinese consumer demand has been plunging for months now.

>DONGGUAN, China — China’s consumers and businesses are losing confidence. Car
sales have plunged. The housing market is stumbling. Some factories are
letting workers off for the big Lunar New Year holiday two months early.

China’s economy has slowed sharply in recent months, presenting perhaps the
biggest challenge to its top leader, Xi Jinping, in his six years of rule.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/business/china-economy-
xi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/business/china-economy-xi-
jinping.html)

The situation in China is bad enough that local press coverage of the economic
situation has been censored since last September.

>BEIJING — China has long made it clear that reporting on politics, civil
society and sensitive historical events is forbidden. Increasingly, it wants
to keep negative news about the economy under control, too.

A government directive sent to journalists in China on Friday named six
economic topics to be “managed,” according to a copy of the order that was
reviewed by The New York Times.

The list of topics includes:

■ Worse-than-expected data that could show the economy is slowing. ■ The
impact of the trade war with the United States. ■ Signs of declining consumer
confidence

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/business/china-censor-
eco...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/business/china-censor-economic-
news.html)

Sometimes a drop in consumer demand in a particular market is more a
reflection of the local economic situation than an indictment of a product
line that is selling fine elsewhere.

~~~
beforedawn
So the massive share price drop is because of China? Go and buy an XR but
don't try to lull us with your shaky 'crisis communication', the case Apple is
crystal-clear.

~~~
gamblor956
If it's every non-Chinese company doing business in China seeing slowed
Chinese growth (or even reduced Chinese demand), then it's pretty clear that
China's market is the problem and not Apple.

In this case, it's not just Apple and Samsung. It's a great many other
industries, especially luxury goods, that have seen large drops in Chinese
consumer demand.

------
beforedawn
OT: Tim Cook/Apple is on the wrong track. The entire line-up of a product
company is fundamentally flawed and heading to nowhere:

Today was the first time, I saw the new iPad Pro in action in a shopping mall
nearby. It was a lazy Tuesday evening and I was in shopping mood. The first
thing I did was running Sun Spider in Safari. Not an up-to-date benchmark but
still a good indicator for performance. This thing reached insane 119ms.
Without having any noisy fans and a battery that runs for days. Then, there is
a buttersmooth 120hz screen, also the first time I saw a hi-fps screen live
and it's so nice. All packed in some slick enclosure, thinner and lighter than
any Surface Microsoft ever made.

I would have bought this device without thinking (this is what malls are for
after all) and I really don't care if it's 1,000, 2,000 or even 3,000 bucks.

But tell me--what should I do with an iPad Pro? The OS is not just crippled
but utterly useless for any real use case. You don't have to be a pro.

I could work via SSH on a remote server, nah I can't test properly without the
major browser being installed or at least Safari's dev tool. Maybe some
mockups with Affinity Designer? It has the most responsive digitizer, so
c'mon. Nope, the files are so big and exchange to my desktop goes always
through a slow cloud, this feels like going back in time and juggling floppy
disks. Maybe some Word? No, I prefer full-fledged Word. Contracts are too
important to fiddle them together on a subpar Word, I don't open Word for fun,
I make or lose money with contracts. If I used this device the entire day I
would also eventually get RSI from moving my hand up and down all the time
(there is no Vimium for Safari).

This is what I mean, Tim Cook does not have this obsession with details like
Jobs had. Let me not start with Macbooks, non-existing Mac Pros or odd, LG-
branded screens. Steve thought all features to the end. Tim doesn't and ships
one half-baken product after another.

~~~
tolmasky
It’s not attention to detail, it’s vision. There’s no _purpose_ to these
devices. Sometimes it seems like there’s too much attention to arbitrary
details. For example, the thinness and speed of the iPad, but to what end?

The original iPhone was rather underpowered even at the time for what it tried
to do, but it was so crazy focused and the vision of what it would allow you
to do so exciting, that you were willing to look past it. It didn’t matter
that it didn’t have 3G or the best camera. Now we’re in literally the opposite
scenario, devices ridiculously overpowered that we wish we could figure out
something to do with. Best chip, best camera, best number to write on the back
of the box. Boring.

As an aside, I am increasingly certain that the sad truth of the iPad _today_
is that a majority of sales are probably the cheaper models used as Envoy
terminals, POS devices, and conference room check-ins. If I count iPad’s I see
day to day, it’s incredibly lopsided to these uses. What a waste.

With Steve, you could draw a straight line from the original Mac to the iPad.
You could see one relentless mission to tame unusable hardware into a friendly
machine _through_ software. You could _imagine_ Steve wanting something like
an iPad even with the original Mac.

What’s the narrative of the hodge-podge of devices we have now? Vague speeches
about “health” and “AR”, always troublingly highly reliant on the hope others
will make use of these technologies. Apple used to lead by example, the first
party software set the bar for what others should do. Nowadays there’s just
the hope that Adobe bringing Photoshop to the iPad will breathe new life into
it. Meanwhile, _Apple has not released a new flagship app for the iPad since
its original release with iWork and Garageband_. It’s been 8 years! Apple
can’t figure out a single new app that can take our breath away? If they’ve
run out of ideas of how this thing can be used, it doesn’t inspire a lot of
confidence.

~~~
baddox
Why does everyone write this stuff with such absolutism? There’s no purpose to
these devices? I have 2 iPad Pros, one I use every day to consume content like
twitter, hacker news, and YouTube. The other I use approximately weekly to
play and record music (connected to a digital piano).

Are there even reports that iPad pros aren’t selling well? I think they are
the best computers ever made.

~~~
tolmasky
Yes. Sales plateaued a while ago (and I think even decreased?). Here’s some
data: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/269915/global-apple-
ipad...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/269915/global-apple-ipad-sales-
since-q3-2010/)

Seoarately, I think many people cannot afford a device that starts at $800
just for Twitter, YouTube, and Hacker News.

~~~
graeme
Those are ipad sales, not ipad pro sales. Within the ipad market we don't
really know how the ipad pros are doing.

The sales peak you refer to predates the ipad pro.

~~~
Damogran6
The current 'pleb' ipad is $329 and does an awesome job being a twitter
appliance. I'm only slightly annoyed as it was half the price I paid for my
iPad Air 2 2-3 years ago.

------
enz
Two years ago, there was an article on the same website "Apple to slice iPhone
production 10%", [https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Apple-to-slice-
iP...](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Apple-to-slice-iPhone-
production-10)

------
joelrunyon
Why can't they just keep making new phones in the size of the iPhone8? Who
decided that we all want to carry around mini-tablets now?

Makes me want to go back to a flip phone.

~~~
mises
I am in total agreement here. I never got the hang of doing "real stuff" on a
phone, and prefer a laptop whenever possible. Phones should be small and
portable, rather than trying to replace tablets (which are in turn trying to
replace laptops, in turn desktops). The last phone I really liked was the
droid razr mini. I also liked the galaxy s3.

Please, phone manufacturers: if you hear this, listen. I do not care about
large phones. I couldn't care less about "screen-to-body ratio". I don't want
a notch or a stupid sliding mechanism. I want a simple, small phone. It should
have excellent battery life (don't care about thickness), be sturdy. Calls,
texts, pictures, and emails are about all that's necessary, along with
occasional web browsing and music playback. Maybe a reader app. That's it. But
I guess you can't charge $1,500 for that.

Edit: Oh yeah, and leave my headphone jack alone. Seriously.

~~~
ianmcgowan
I just downgraded from a flagship android phone to a refurb iPhone SE from
eBay. New battery, no visible signs of wear; $120 for everything on your list.
If I have to do it every year, I'll still be ahead after 5 years.

~~~
mises
I might look into that; the recommendation is appreciated.

------
cronix
Next to not really providing anything revolutionarily new the last few years,
I think their biggest problem is the $1k premium price tag, which not nearly
as many are willing to pay. The product simply isn't worth the price tag for
what it actually does compared to a model a few years older. People just
aren't willing to fork over a few hundred extra bucks above and beyond to have
the Apple brand when it's really just a status symbol, that is losing its
status, and there are many various competitors that do more than great job (in
some cases, arguably better). The price going from 3 figures to 4 figures, for
a freaking phone, is a large mental/psychological barrier to a lot of people.
A phone is not worth _one thousand dollars_ to _most_ people. Prices have
_literally_ doubled since the first iPhone ($499).

That's also the number one thing I hear people say when they say they won't
upgrade to a new iPhone - they are getting too expensive and their current
phone does more than enough. Upgrade so you can make animated poop emojis?
C'mon. No thanks, I'll just pay $50 and get a new battery for my old phone and
go another couple of years. At the bottom of the article, there is a link to
another article, "China turns sour for Apple, leaving Asian suppliers exposed"
[1]. I don't think the attitude in the following quote is unique to the
Chinese consumers.

> Apple, with its high-priced lineup, probably suffered more than most from
> the slowing economy. The iPhone XR variant with 128 gigabytes of storage
> retails for 6,999 yuan ($1,018), while the latest devices from domestic
> competitors like Huawei Technologies can be had for around 3,000 yuan to
> 5,000 yuan. [1]

[1] [https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/China-turns-
sour-...](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/China-turns-sour-for-
Apple-leaving-Asian-suppliers-exposed)

~~~
FPGAhacker
This basically sums up where I am at. I have a 6s plus, and while the new
phones are unambiguously better, I’m just not going to spend $1k for
incremental improvement.

I played with the phones yesterday at an apple store, and they were lovely. I
really liked everything about them, aside from some odd phony bezels in
safari.

But not for $1k. It’s not that I think they aren’t worth it. I think they are.
Just like a nice bmw is worth $80k. But not to me.

------
gamechangr
I have a 6S and a company that will pay to upgrade my phone anytime. What am I
missing?

You know innovation is slowing when I don't think it's worth the hassle to
upgrade and it's effective free for me (since my company will pay for it).

~~~
pfranz
I just upgraded from a 6s last week to an Xs. I mostly did it for the camera
to take family pictures. Otherwise, it still worked pretty well.

The battery is lasts significantly longer. I kept and eye on my old phone and
it was still at 90% capacity. With the 6s, I'd /usually/ make it through the
day, but doing anything hefty and I might not. I purposefully stopped charging
the Xs during the day today because I was curious and my phone is slightly
under 50% charged in the late evening.

I bought a few wireless chargers my wife never used so I tried those. I really
like it, especially at night. I think I was using an underpowered power
adapter, which is why my wife had problems and gave up on it. My 6s would get
pocket lint stuck in the lightning port and a few times a year I'd have to dig
it out with something. I think recently the port itself on the 6s was probably
getting worn out because more and more of my chargers were finicky.

I really like face id. I liked touch id, but often my hands would be wet or
I'd be wearing a glove. It would be kind of annoying to move your thumb over
to open your password manager or bank app. Face id is noticeably more
convenient even after a day or two.

The camera is great, the speaker is noticeably louder, it's nice to get the
shortcut for the flashlight on the lock screen.

I'm still getting used to the OS changes on the new phone. I had to look up
how to power it off. Using swipe for Home and the other gestures were pretty
easy to get used to. I'm not a fan of using the top-right for control center
because I can't use one hand for it anymore. It feels slightly bigger and
heavier than the 6s, but I miss having something the size of the 5. I also
think it's silly that it comes with a 5w charger.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
When was the 6S's battery last replaced?

I got my 6S's battery replaced on New Year's Eve to take advantage of the
discounted price. I wasn't actually expecting much improvement, because the
phone was only a year old and the battery supposedly had 85% of its original
capacity.

To my surprise, the new battery has in fact made a huge difference. It used to
be that when I left work, my phone had somewhere between 15%-25% remaining, if
that. Now, it always has a comfortable 50%-60%

~~~
pfranz
It was the original battery and iOS was saying 90% capacity. I had been
watching the capacity since it was added to iOS and originally intended to
swap it out with Apple for the $30 (or just replace it myself, like I have for
previous iPhones). I really think if that's the only concern, replacing the
battery has always been a huge cost/benefit most people don't seem to think
about.

The 6s has a 1715 mA·h battery versus the Xs' 2658 mA·h. This is why still
including the 5w charger is silly. Charging with this was already slow on the
6s. It's really hard to quantify usage, especially when the chips are so
different. I really noticed the battery life start dipping when I switched to
Bluetooth headphones when using the 6s. I'm hoping on the Xs either that
Bluetooth is more optimized, but even if it isn't the same draw will drain a
smaller percentage of the battery.

The main thing I was hoping to capture in my reply was the little, less
concrete things about the update. I usually skip a few generations and a lot
of the game changers are small, personal things that don't always jump out in
reviews. As an old example, I don't often use AirDrop, but when I finally
updated all of my devices to support it, it's way easier than messing with
Dropbox, using some app with a web server, connecting a cable, or using a usb
or memory stick. Other times it's better radios that power on more quickly,
are faster, or more reliable.

------
melling
Don’t they typically “reduce production” in January?

Last year at this time, people were saying the iPhone X was dead.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/01/21/apple-
ip...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/01/21/apple-iphone-x-buy-
sales-specs-new-iphone-release-date/#202313e410cb)

------
headgasket
The lineup. They have 13(!) iPhone models(not configs!) in production. SJ
would be furious. The first thing he did when he came back in the late 90s is
to cut the line to 3 models. Economies of scale and concentration of
innovation at a single point.

------
rchaud
Isn't this the natural plateau all product categories eventually reach? 1
billion phones sold by Apple alone since 2007, but of course Wall St needs
more.

I'd wager that consumers have reached the point where phones are 'boring' and
increasingly expensive utility purchases, like a new laptop. We're way past
the point of "there's an app for that" style ads. Beyond the basic social
network apps, messaging apps and games, people don't even bother downloading
apps anymore.

Like laptops, a phone you buy today will easily last you 2-4 years (laptops
last longer of course). A marginally better camera isn't going to convince
people to cough up $1000+ each year when they know the pictures are going to
end up in a highly compressed form on Snap/FB/IG anyway.

------
notyourwork
And here I am still perfectly happy with my iPhone SE.

~~~
meritt
I know correlation doesn't imply causation, but I'm going with it:
[https://i.imgur.com/fyveqs3.png](https://i.imgur.com/fyveqs3.png)

edit: chart of AAPL stock price for the past 12 years

~~~
spiritcat
graph of sales of 4" phones?

------
g-n
Let's set aside China. iPhones have increased drastically in price over the
past two years. Even if their revenue would still be the same, doesn't this
mean people are buying less iPhones and more people are leaving the Apple
ecosystem? Leaving the ecosystem is a bigger threat for them, because they
also rely on the sales of the accessories. People are more likely to buy a mac
or an iPad if they also have an iPhone.

------
rjf72
Many people, perhaps Apple themselves, are ignoring something very
fundamental. What happened to PCs? It's not that they became obsolete. In fact
that is precisely the problem. They stopped becoming obsolete. In the early
2000s you'd buy a PC and then 6 months later it was outdated. 2 years later it
was obsolete. Now you can buy a PC and it will last you more or less
indefinitely for everything you might use it for. Even less common tasks like
extremely high end gaming are possible by just buying a new relatively cheap
video card - not a new PC.

The point is that the same thing is, and will continue, to happen to tablets,
phones, and various other forms of consumer electronics. There is an
asymptotic decline in value gained between iterations. And that asymptote,
thanks to the speed of technological development, approaches 0 pretty rapidly.
This inherently means that no computing product is going to be a long term
sustainable golden goose.

\---

The thing I don't understand here is that I think the above is so plainly
clear as to be practically self evident. Yet then you have people who are
certainly much more well informed on business than myself, such as Warren
Buffet, declaring that a $1000 iPhone X is "enormously underpriced" and is
clearly going long on Apple as his organization continues to accumulate Apple
Stock. I don't understand the dissonance.

~~~
pmart123
I think people are aware of this. The idea is as the upgrade cycle takes
longer, people will still upgrade to the latest and greatest when they do
upgrade. The other assumption is that the phone upgrade cycle will still be
faster than laptops at steady state.

------
jarym
Apple really have an enviable position like few hardware companies before
them: when there’s a demand anomaly they can just ask their suppliers to turn
the dials. Apple in this regard doesn’t have to worry so much about keeping
factories running.

Separately, while Tim C may have pointed the finger st the Chinese economy,
there remains a growing concern that the global economy is also slowing. China
may just be going through an isolated economic change or it may be a signal
that other parts of the world are to follow.

~~~
orev
Is this really unique to Apple? This is what Lean is all about. They might
have some risk with regard to contract quotas, but otherwise this should be
normal in a "just-in-time manufacturing" world.

------
tedyoung
With my iPad Air 2, I notice the slowness, and a new one with faster processor
will definitely make a difference.

With my iPhone 6s, everything I need runs more than fast enough, and with a
replaced battery, runs long enough on a charge where I don't worry about it. I
don't need a larger nor faster phone. I'm fine with the Touch ID. So yeah, why
should I upgrade to even a 7?

I will be upgrading my Series 0 Watch, so Apple's still making money from me:
new iPad and new Watch, just no new iPhone.

~~~
saagarjha
iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6s have similar processors that differ by less than a
generation. I'm surprised you find that their performances are so different.

~~~
baroffoos
ipad air might have been underclocked due to a battery that needs replacing

------
hn_throwaway_99
This is basically old news as it is in line with Apple's reduced earning
guidance announcement. iPhone is about 60% of Apple's revenue, and they
reduced their guidance from 89-93 billion in Q4 to 84 billion. So a 10%
reduction in iPhone production is right in line with an overall ~6% reduction
in revenue, which is what Apple announced.

~~~
ksec
The article is a rumours or suggesting for Q1, ( Or Q2 in Apple's terms ), not
Q4.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Understood, but if Apple knew their guidance was going down substantially for
Q4, obviously they would lower their inventory for the next quarter. No one
thinks the Chinese economy is magically going to rebound in the next 90 days.

------
jonplackett
You can blame all sorts things but when I just look to my own experience of
if/when I update my iPhone it's quite simple.

This year was the least different AND most expensive iPhone so far. So I
didn't upgrade, and lots of other people didn't either.

------
dschuler
Apple’s latest annual report [0] for fiscal year ending Sep 29, 2017 shows a
slight sales increase for China compared to 2017. Is the recent Apple memo re.
iPhone sales reflected in this annual report, or are Apple sales in China more
recent than Sep-Oct last year? Would be interesting to get more data, or
insight into what the 10-k might be telling that I’m missing.

[0]
[https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/68027c6...](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/68027c6d-356d-46a4-a524-65d8ec05a1da.pdf)

------
zepto
Maybe Apple tells suppliers to produce 10% fewer iPhones.

Buy just as likely, as _happens every year_ , unnamed sources make this claim,
which later turn out to be baseless.

Why would they do that, I wonder?

~~~
saagarjha
> Buy just as likely, as happens every year, unnamed sources make this claim,
> which later turn out to be baseless.

Apple doesn't publicly revise their estimates every year, though.

~~~
zepto
So what? That doesn’t mean that this time the sources are correct.

~~~
saagarjha
True, but it makes it significantly more likely that they are, given that
Apple has officially said that iPhone sales were less than they had expected.

~~~
SllX
Possibly in the sense that a stopped clock is right twice a day, rather than
this being backed by a credible source. I think the likelihood that this is
backed by a credible source is still probably about the same, but maybe this
is the year that it is?

------
LeoPanthera
Is this unusual, post-Christmas?

~~~
howlingfantods
The point is that they're cutting 10% from planned production, rather than
previous quarter production. This implies less than projected demand, which
means they may miss their sales forecasts.

~~~
zepto
There are reports like this every year, and none of them have so far been
accurate.

~~~
batiudrami
Considering Apple just released a letter to stockholders noting that their
projections were too high and directly pointing to poor iPhone sales as the
reason I'm not sure what your comment is trying to say.

[https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-
cook-...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-
apple-investors/)

~~~
zepto
My comment is trying to say that this is still likely just another of the
essentialy fake supply chain doom stories that happens to coincide with a
genuine reduction in sales in the weakening Chinese economy.

------
synthmeat
I jumped all-in into Apple's ecosystem in late 2013. Got myself MacBook Air
(11", i7, 8GB, 512GB) and iPhone 5S (64GB), so all maxxed out, for about
$2.5k. So. Awesome. I felt like road warrior, popping 5S with unlimited 4G in
front jeans pocket, and having 12+ hours on (barely noticeable) MBA in my
backpack. Looked cool to pop 5S single-handedly from pocket while unlocking it
with fingerprint in a single motion, cowboy style. It fell down the toilette
on more ocassions than I care to admit. Works fine. It runs a Personal Hotspot
24/7 too. Continuity is awesome, I don't even need to touch phone to use
phone! MBA I can balance on my thigh while smashing keys without looking at
them (touch typist over here). Tried it on 13", it was too big for that. When
the waitress comes to take my order, I look her straight in the eye - "Oh, hi.
I'd like an espresso and a fizzy, thanks!" \- while touch-typing some JS crap.
She's first confused, then smiling, then awed. I can see the progression on
her face. I smile back, while still smashing the keys without looking.
Sometimes I whip it up at POS to transfer funds to credit card. "Oh, no, he's
gonna delay the lin..." "Done! Please try card again!" Magsafe is lovely, I
have my USBs, headphone jacks, the works. Siri is a gimmick, but I let it
slide. There's future in voice interaction, they need the data, and it's not
like I'm forced to use it.

I know, mostly I'm just pro-signalling. But I _am_ a pro, and my hardware,
software and its usage should reflect that.

===

Cut to 2019...

Apparently, they want you to really dig into your phone now. Like, literally
dig in. With two hands and a face. It's harder to let go of it if you already
hold it in both hands. I guess engagement with Instagram app is higher like
that. I don't use Instagram. And my right thumb doesn't reach upper left
corner on more than 4".

Cameras on phones are ridiculously powerful. What's good that for me when 90%
of my photos are just document archival. It's just gonna eat up my storage. I
don't use front camera at all. I don't even own a mirror at home!

FaceID is useless to me. My phone is mostly a hotspot and a notification hub
at arms length, on desk. Static. For most interactions, I never face it.
Fingerprint works really well.

There's special thingamayings to do with AR and it's another gimmick. I did AR
decade ago in consumer-space. It's bullshit. I can see it quite well in
industrial environment though. I guess they just needed to fill up keynotes
with something.

Notch is a lot of dead pixels in my book. Screen margin space for handling the
device is reduced.

Touchbar discourages touch-typing and steals my treasured
media/sound/brightness keys. I listen to a lot of music and have pretty good
idea how bright my monitor should be at any time.

Butterfly keyboard is supposedly thwarted by some dust. I sometimes use my old
MBA even with a drizzle. Plenty of smoke particles around it too.

I get less hours of battery life mostly due to pushing pixels I don't need.

If I wasn't in-the-know, on paper, new MBA would look worse and more
expensive. CPU is crap. Storage is way too expensive.

===

Apologies for a longer, what it amounts to, rant. Wanted to get a lay of the
land for myself, as my batteries are showing age - almost 3000 cycles on MBA!

I think I've concluded that hardware I got in 2013 was kind of a miracle, not
design. A coincidence that happened to align with my use-cases, due to various
hardware and economic constraints of the time.

Right now, I'm gonna just go and order replacement batteries for current
hardware, and go look elsewhere. But where? For 4" phone, I'm looking at
Caterpillar Android stuff, made for people who get shit done. For laptop? I
don't think I'll ever find anything that's not significantly worse experience
than MBA with macOS. Desktop seems to be healthy in interesting options these
days.

Or maybe just wait. I can push this 2013 hardware to 2020, I think. Pretty
damn good!

Disappointment abounds.

------
sdan
They need to start listening to their customers. Please bring an updated SE
and focus on services... maybe even cloud services.

------
jamisteven
"produce 10% fewer". Yes, much better sound to it than "reduce production by
10%".

------
stuaxo
Price has gone up and they said they wanted to be more of a luxury good, so it
is unsurprising.

------
dbg31415
I want a phone that's the size of the SE, with a screen that goes edge to edge
like the XS.

Make it so! (=

~~~
AlexandrB
That's my dream too.

I handled a modern iPod Touch recently. What a wonderful form factor - small,
light, but feels durable and well-built. I'd love to get _that_ but with a
cellular modem and OLED screen. The rest of the modern Apple features
(telephoto lens, Face ID, force touch, 3D touch, etc.) I can live without.
Wireless charging is _very nice_ , but not worth making the phone bigger, more
brittle (glass back), and more expensive.

------
beforedawn
The last iPhone I bought was a maxed-out 7. Tell me one good reason why I
should buy a XS (or a bulky XR).

~~~
berberous
I think the 4x4 MIMO antenna (for faster cellular internet) is the most
enticing feature. Not enough for me to spend $1500 though.

~~~
ac29
I've found that increased LTE speeds on paper haven't really translated into
real world speed increases for me -- my phone can do 1Gbps LTE on paper
according to the manufacturer, but I've never actually seen higher than 50Mbps
or so, even when within 100m or so of the base station with line of sight.

------
exabrial
Apple: the problem for decreased sales is Chinese problems!

Also Apple: Removes headphone jacks, quadruples prices, sues people fixing
their phones, removes fingerprint reader, nerfs nfc, replaces screws with
pentalobes

~~~
puranjay
For real. Apple's prices are completely out of control. Here in India, the
Apple iPhone XS starts at INR 99,000 ($1,400).

That's an absurd price for a phone. A brand new OnePlus 6T is a third of the
price.

Their new laptops are also insanely priced. The 2018 Macbook Air is more than
2x the price of the 2017 Macbook Air.

I don't know what kind of pricing strategy this is, but it has turned me
completely off the company's lineup.

~~~
briandear
Does the OnePlus have the same tech as iPhone? Are you comparing it fairly?
The Galaxy Note 9 is $1000 in the US. The 6T gets crushed by the A12 chip in
the XR. The XR is about $150 more than the 6T, comparing it with the Max is
disingenuous. The XR also has one hour longer battery life. The XR also has
FaceID. So the 6T has a worse camera, dramatically slower processor, and
lower-life battery. You are free to make a comparison, but it’s comparing a
Hyundai with an Audi. The XR costs more because you are getting more. Whether
or not you want that “more” is a personal choice, but let’s not pretend that
the XR is overpriced. Apple could make a shittier phone and end up priced like
the 6T. OnePlus is also operating at barely any profit. So if you took out
Apple’s average 38% margin, that puts the XR at $464; so Apple is making a
much better phone at a lower price than OnePlus — which makes OnePlus’s tech
all the more disappointing: they spend more than Apple and ship a worse phone.

The 2018 MacBook Air isn’t 2x the price of a 2017 Air in the United States.
First of all, the 2017 MacBook Air was actually a 2015 MacBook Air with a tiny
bump in clock speed. Retail price in 2017 was $999. Retail price in 2018?
$1199. The 2018 has Touch ID and retina which the 2017 version didn’t. That’s
not even close to “2x the price.)” The tariffs pre-2018 were 15% on computers,
now they are over 17%. Then there is an 18% sales tax on top of that! So 35%
of the MacBook Air cost in India is just taxes. That means the government of
India makes as much “profit” on a laptop as Apple does for making the damned
things. Perhaps have a chat with your government about those high tariffs?
Apple didn’t double the price, your taxes went up.

~~~
puranjay
Here in India, the 2018 Macbook Air is about $1550. The 2017 version is $920.

I've been using a OnePlus 5T and honestly can't fathom any reason why I would
want a faster processor any time soon. And the OnePlus 6T is even faster.

I'm just saying that charging people $1500 for a phone and then wondering why
they're not buying any is a dumb strategy.

------
dondon1
Why is no one mentioning the heavy competition that Apple is facing as the
main reason?

Xiaomi Mi 8 Huawei Honor Pocophone [1] OnePlus etc.

They have amazing flagship specs and cost around 300$. I noticed that in
germany many people can't imagine spending 1100Euro+ on an iPhone once they
saw the cheap competition from the Chinese brands.

This will only get worser in the coming years as more people get used to
Android. Young users also can't afford an Apple product in Europe and they
watch the youtubers that always talk about those cheap brands. So they will
grow up with android and will get used to it, which will make it very hard for
apple to get them to switch. There is a noticeble change among the Youtube
stars (influencers) that switched to windows machines to edit their videos.
They just didn't have any comparable options in the Apple lineup. This "free"
advertisement will also lead more young people to not desire Macbooks as much.

Americans should look up the market-shares of iOS internationally, it's very
low. Therefore there is much less lockin (iMassage) or stigma towards using
Android. Android is also getting only better over time.

Android has the best camera software and Hardware with the Pixel 3. -Best AI,
Google assistant is miles ahead of Siri, Siri is an embarrassment -Best Maps
-Best integration of its complete software suite of Drive, Docs, etc...

Then the is the whole textbook innovators dilemma. -Apple keeps iMassage iOS
exclusive and passend on the opportunity to have the most popular
communication App on the planet just in the hopes to get a few more iPhone
sales. -They don't open the Siri API and stiffle integration in other home
devices just to get a few more HomePod sales. -They don't allow for Spotify
with its 70m paying costumers to connect to HomePod to get a few more
subscriptions for Apple Music. -They don't want to build a Macbook Air 15" to
not lose sales of the 15 Pro line. -They don't include a fastcharger to get a
few more $on their seperate fastcharging adapter, most people that are even
aware of that will buy a second market adapter anyway, and the people that are
not aware of the existance of fastcharging for iPhones are just blow away when
they see an 300$ Android being charged with 18w -They refuse to admit the big
mistake their ultra thin keyboard was/is in their macbook lineup. I heard from
multiple people already that had the money to spend 4000$+ on a new macbook
pro 15 that instead held of or bought a used 2015 Macbook instead.

They are so afraid on cannibalising their own business that they stifle them
to death and pass on the longterm opportunities.

[1][https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_pocophone_f1-9293.php](https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_pocophone_f1-9293.php)

------
ejcx
My bet on Apple is they miss their phone production projection and blow away
the services and accessories projections.

------
tanilama
It is hilarious to me that people here still try to justify Apple's
miscalculated pricing strategy.

To much of the world outside of US, iPhone no longer offers the comparable
value that lives up to its price tag. Not even being a status symbol could
save it.

Time to wake up. Slashing the price with more competitive medium tier devices,
or being phased out, pick one.

------
Karupan
To me the latest iPhone (xs) doesn’t have any feature that warrants such a
price bump. I got an iPhone 7+ 128gb for AUD 1429 when it launched. The XS
256gb is $1879. I got one for my wife only because I had a gift card for a few
hundred bucks. It’s a great phone, but not worth the $450 price bump for me.

If Apple bumps the storage on the base model to 128gb and drops the price by a
hundred bucks, I’ll pick up this years phone on launch day. But I don’t see
that happening.

~~~
speeq
iPhones have yearly release cycles. Just buy the XS in around 12 months for a
major discount. It'll still be a top-notch phone with one of the most
efficient processors out there.

For people who always want the latest and greatest:
[https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-
program](https://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program)

~~~
Karupan
I don’t see that happening as the iPhone 7+ costs $1100. The price had fallen
just $330 in more than two years. Not a considerable fall if you ask me.

------
freeflight
Eh, not really surprised. I've had iPhones since the very first one in 2007,
tried switching to Android, but just never stuck with it.

Now it's Apple itself who are forcing me to switch because for whatever reason
they decided that nobody needs 4" phones anymore, instead, everybody is
supposed to use massive devices which are defacto phablets.

If there was a new 4" option from Apple, I would have gotten a new iPhone this
year, but due to a lack of those, I'll instead either be forced to get a new
SE as a future replacement, while they are still available, or switch to
Android for good where plenty of smaller form factor options exist.

That's business Apple lost based on their own shortsighted decisions, nobody
to blame except for themselves. At this point, it feels a little bit like the
"Apple just making iPhone bigger" meme, back from the first iPad release, has
actually become reality. [0]

[0] [http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/iboard-
im...](http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/iboard-imat-
ipad.jpeg)

