Apple Says It Could Miss $9 Billion In iPhone Sales Due To Weak Demand (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple CEO Tim Cook published a letter to investors today warning of weaker than expected first-quarter earnings, citing "fewer iPhone upgrades than we had anticipated." The weakened demand came primarily from China, although Cook notes that "in some developed markets, iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be." In his letter, Cook offers several explanations for the lower earnings guidance: earlier launch timing of the iPhone XS and XS Max compared to the iPhone X, the strength of the US dollar, supply constraints due to the number of new products Apple released in the fall, and overall economic weakness in some markets. But the core issue remains simple: people just aren't buying as many new iPhones as Apple hoped. All in all, Apple's revised Q1 guidance forecast is dropping by up to $9 billion in revenue compared to its original estimate.

Comments

What is that, like 9 iPhones?

[I'm just joshin]

Guess they should have realized they were pricing themselves out of the market earlier.

Re: What is that, like 9 iPhones?

[XopherMV]

... the iPhone 6s isn't obsolete...

This is the exact problem right here. There's no incentive to buy newer phones anymore since they're not adding dramatically new must-have features. Yet, that didn't stop Apple from dramatically increasing prices as if it were adding those features. Sorry, I'm not going to pay $1000+ for a phone that's just marginally better than the one I currently own.

Were Apple to spend a bunch of their cash on research and come up with new features that people wanted, they could jump start the market again. But, that's not happening.

Re: What is that, like 9 iPhones?

[UnknownSoldier]

>>... the iPhone 6s isn't obsolete...
> This is the exact problem right here.

Yup, I'll second that. I have a iPhone 7+ that is paid off. I was going to upgrade to the iPhone X but I asked myself "Do I _really_ NEED a new $1,000 phone? Is this a Want or Need?"

The answer was "While I like the OLED screen and better camera, nope, I don't need it. I'd rather spend the money on something else -- like a Digital Piano, VSTs, etc."

Phones are more then "good enough" compared to the previous generation. All I want is:

* A fucking 3.5 mm plug so I can listen AND charge the phone at the same time (not this bullshit slow wireless recharging shenanigans), and
* Longer battery life.

Re:What is that, like 9 iPhones?

[rl117]

That's a typical MBA attitude, and it's devastating to the long-term prospects of a company. It doesn't matter that they are the worst selling. They are needed, because they fill a niche. If you continually axed the "worst selling" product, you'd drop everything except the iPhone... Oh, wait... The Mac Pro should not take much R&D time. It's a box with a PC mainboard in it. A slightly nicer box than other midi towers, but it's still just a box. They could rebadge a Dell Precision and I'd buy it. The Mac Mini could be a standard mini-ITX or equivalent. The problem here is that Apple wants to over-engineer these systems to use highly custom board designs and cases to make these as small as possible. But for the niche they occupy, the end user is unlikely to care about that. That's the strategic mistake. The Pro should be powerful and expandable, but it's neither. It's dated and restricted. The mini is smaller, but there's no need to make it so small it can't be upgraded by an end user. A little bigger, and it could have M2 interfaces and maybe a couple of 3.5" bays internally. But you have to dismantle half the internals just to access the RAM slot, and the SSD is soldered. What a pain. I want a new Mac mini (or Pro) for my consulting development work. But the capabilities and price of current hardware makes it pointless. Even if I invest in one, who would want to run my code on such anaemic and overpriced hardware? They need to remember that while the phone and iMac are to a large extent fashion products, the high-end PC depends primarily upon functionality and price, and they've missed the mark for years on that front.

Apple is dying

[WCMI92]

They have lost their momentum. They used to make great products that just worked. Perfectly. They have been living on that reputation and it's about over.

Re:Apple is dying

[exomondo]

They have lost their momentum. They used to make great products that just worked. Perfectly.

Now you can buy the latest MacBook and the latest iPhone and the cable they supply won't even connect the two together.

Re: Guidance change, but factors could change...

[Anonymous Coward]

People are rejecting Apple products because of Apple's insistence on not allowing users of tbeir products to fix their own stuff after they have bought and own it.

Louis Rossman exposes this regularly. A high school kid saves up enough money to by an Apple laptop as their first one, believing it to be the best option for them at the time with its ease of jse for newbies. Fast forward to where a solder joint breaks and the laptop no longer boots and the kid takes it in to a Genius Bar to get jt fixed. Apple will charge the kid for an entire new motherboard and refuse to allow its store staff to fix the old. Kid is out $1200 dollars (on purpose, Apple's goal is to get the kid to just buy a new laptop and throw tbe old in their trash) instead of $35 parts plus labor combined at a competent laptop repair shop.

People who use Apple products are increasingly seeing the light. That type of behavior is profit driven and in no way consumer positive. It's a shame as Apple do seem to see the light with regards to protecting privacy of its consumers, when other companies flat out don't care.

But therin lies the rub. Apple makes bank based on their no repair policy whereas everyone else subsidises their stuff through collecting and selling user metrics and serving them ads. The entire culture is a racket and people getting rich off it don't give a flying fig if it all comes crashing down when justice finally catches up with them (Google is a hack away from being sued into oblivion for the amount of interconnected data it has managed to collect and actively store. Once the data gets released to the light of day, practically no one will be able to prove they are who they say they are in legal settings, and any criminal can electronically become any other person they want as many times as they want).

Re:Just add this crazy new feature everyone demand

[Powercntrl]

I bet if they added headphone jacks again

The iPhone has been jack-less since the 7. The iPhone jumped the shark with the X - when Apple decided to go fucking nuts with the "flagship" model starting at $1k, and they haven't looked back.

Dare I say it, the other problem with the X and later models, is that the iPhone has ceased to be intuitive to operate. You have to just know where/how you're supposed to swipe to make stuff happen, and Steve Jobs is probably spinning in his grave. I'm sure this has put off a lot of the older generations from upgrading.