
Apple Scales Back Orders for Its iPhones - prostoalex
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/apple-scales-back-orders-for-its-iphones-1452049390-lMyQjAxMTA2NjAyNjkwNjY0Wj
======
billyhoffman
[sigh]

Here’s WSJ from January 2013:

 _Apple Inc. has cut its orders for components for the iPhone 5 due to weaker-
than-expected demand, people familiar with the situation said Monday. Apple’s
orders for iPhone 5 screens for the January-March quarter, for example, have
dropped to roughly half of what the company had previously planned to order,
two of the people said._

[http://www.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142412788732359620457...](http://www.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323596204578240440691304344-lMyQjAxMTAzMDEwMzExNDMyWj.html)

So WSJ says 50% drop in orders for the January-March quarter. Yet when you
look at Apple's actual results for that January to March quarter iPhone
experienced a YoY _increase_.

[http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/04/23Apple-Reports-
Seco...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/04/23Apple-Reports-Second-
Quarter-Results.html)

Fool me once WSJ...

Journalists should be very careful when quoting component manufacturers. Apple
often buys all the components a manufacturer can make (and then buys them a
factory to make more, and then buys all the machines in the world that can be
used to make the parts, etc). Apple quite literally can make or break a
component manufacturer (GT Advanced comes to mind...), so manufacturers
willing to talk to the press usually have an angle or axe to grind.

~~~
baldfat
> Fool me once WSJ...

YoY INCREASE does not mean Apple hit their expected target goal. Apple
expected to sell MORE phones then it did. It still sold more then the year
before but they sold less then expected.

~~~
zepto
Actually no. Apple did hit their stated target - since they hit their earnings
target which is the only target they have stated.

The only 'expectations' in these stories are completely fictitious and are
made up by people outside Apple.

------
simonh
For an alternative analysis:

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-iphone-and-china-
fear...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-iphone-and-china-fears-are-
overblown-says-analyst-2016-01-04)

As has been pointed out, New year predictions of falling iPhone demand due to
supply chain reports is now an annual tradition. One day it will be true, but
in the sense that if you keep crying wolf eventually, one day, there might
well be a wolf. I suppose the Journal can claim that they are only passing on
reports, which is their job as journalists, but if they want to do so with any
honesty or integrity the least they can do is point out the times they Passed
on reports of exactly same thing in previous years.

------
sytelus
Article is misleading and not well researched. These two comments at bottom of
article reveals:

First Foxconn subsidy news is wrong:

 _The $12 million in payments referred to in this article were actually issued
for the 2014 calendar year.

[http://newpaper.dahe.cn/hnsb/html/2016-01/06/content_1352344...](http://newpaper.dahe.cn/hnsb/html/2016-01/06/content_1352344.htm?div=-1)

[http://hn.ifeng.com/a/20160106/4169476_0.shtml](http://hn.ifeng.com/a/20160106/4169476_0.shtml)
_

And then this comment says news websites has formed this as habit at the start
of the year:

 _Doesn 't this happen every year? Headlines from March 2015: "Apple's iPhone
Juggernaut Slowing Down Across The Globe"

([http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2015/03/16/apples-
iph...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2015/03/16/apples-iphone-
juggernaut-slowing-down-across-the-globe/) _

------
zepto
This comes up every year and has been false every year so far.

~~~
venomsnake
Some year it will be true. And you have self fulfilling prophecy afterwards.

~~~
zepto
It may be true that Apple stops growing at some point, assuming we don't start
colonizing space before they do creating an ever expanding market.

However it may never be true that supply chain rumors are an accurate
indicator.

------
ronnier
Largely mobile phones are feature complete. There's very little that can be
added that makes it worth upgrading at this point. Unless there's some game
changing new feature, expect people to upgrade less as they are completely
satisfied with their phones and will keep it until it breaks.

~~~
davej
I feel like phones are slightly larger than optimum at the moment. At least
for my preferences. I guess it's tougher to fit high spec hardware into a
phone with a smaller footprint.

I bought into Steve Jobs' idea phones should be usable one-handed. I think the
sweet-spot for that is 4 inches or less. A premium phone at these dimensions
doesn't exist anymore, the last one was probably the iPhone 5S.

I went from iPhone 3GS -> iPhone 5 -> Sony Xperia Z3 Compact and honestly the
Z3 Compact is larger than I would like (4.6" screen). I'm honestly considering
getting a 5S for my next phone because I don't want a phone as big as the
iPhone 6.

I noticed recently that the One Plus 2 Mini is going to have a 5" screen, that
seems insane for a "mini" phone.

~~~
matwood
I'm the opposite. I have a 6s now and am thinking about moving to the 6s+. I
use my phone more like a tablet, plug head phones in to talk and have wireless
headphones for the gym.

~~~
davej
Yeah, that's cool too. I guess we just have different use cases.

------
jandrese
This doesn't seem surprising. The market for smartphones is starting to get
saturated and we should expect the growth of demand to slow as we start to
crest the top of the S curve. It's pretty clear that Apple is still going to
sell a ton of iPhone 7s, probably at a new record rate, but the level of
growth just won't be the same.

------
Spooky23
I went to the Apple Store in my not-so-big town before lunch this morning to
return an item I purchased at Christmas time.

Being 11am in January, there was nobody in the mall -- I grabbed a Starbucks
(1 customer sitting down) and headed over to do my return. There is a rather
long queue in front of the store and 2-3 Apple people taking names to let you
in the store. Inside, there are probably about 100-150 customers. It's
literally like standing on a train platform -- packed. In the 20 minutes that
I was waiting, I counted about a half dozen iPads, 5-6 Macs and about two
dozen iPhones walking out the door.

Apple is still on fire -- when I worked retail in the 90s, January-April was
death. Hardly any midweek business whatsoever. They probably did more business
in a half hour than the CompUSA I worked at in 1998 made in a day in January.

------
MCRed
The Wall Street Journal, in the early 1990s, reported that Apple had been
bought by Sun Microsystems. They never retracted the story. This may be a
generally credible newspaper, but this article sounds just like the constant
stream of Apple Doom-And-Gloom I've been reading going back 30 years.

There is a reliable indicator of Apples expected sales-- and it's forward
looking. This is the CapEx expenditures, which Apple forecasts out in its
reports. When they expect to sell a lot of new phones, they buy more equipment
to be able to make those phones. Apple hates to have lack of supply when they
release a new product and there is huge demand (And Apple never has huge
warehouses of unsold products they have to unload like other companies do.)

The idea that the s products are "lackluster" is silly... they have been
following a tick-tock strategy for 5 years now and it has been working
effectively, but every tock year we hear about how "nothings different"
(because apparently to these people if the case is the same the internals must
be too.)

Usually, despite the claim Apple was sold, you don't see this level of poor
journalism in the WSJ. But I guess that's the nature of the "news game" now.

------
FreedomToCreate
They build it up and then they tear it down. Eventually they will be right,
but something is telling me (Christmas sales forecasts) that Apple is about to
demolish another quarter.

------
mixmastamyk
I wouldn't be surprised if most bought the 6 last year due to its larger size
and hence have no need to upgrade to the 6s this year. I did and enjoy the 6s,
because I upgraded from the 5 (even that jump was slightly underwhelming). I
bought it for the camera and screen size.

------
thecosas
I'm pretty sure this same story has been told for each major rev of the
iPhone. "s-years" tend to be stronger because it is a proven product design,
etc., so more people buy them.

------
Oletros
Quarterly report will tell, until then, it is only speculation

