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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.
I bet if they added headphone jacks again, the new phones would sell like hotcakes. Who wants to upgrade when there's a huge decrease in functionality?
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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.
Corporatism != Free Market
In his letter, Cook offers several explanations for the lower earnings guidance
And he never once mentioned the jacked up prices of the new Apple offerings nor the lack of innovation that has led to Apple's quality being par with competitors'.
Cook has neither the vision nor the control that Jobs had. The latest phones have Lightning ports instead of the industry-standard USB-C, dropping the headphone jack, but the Mac lines all offer USB-C. A competent CEO with control over his various divisions, as Jobs was, would have standardized on USB-C for all products. Cook simply does not wield enough power within his own house to make that happen. Jobs moved Apple to eschew the PS/2, serial, and parallel ports in favor of a single standard, USB, and that took vision and control: Cook has neither.
Cook wastes Apple's time and resources on content creation, bogus iTunes adventures like music streaming, and so forth. Apple needs to recenter itself around its core competencies: hardware and software. Forget "thinner" and remember what "pro" used to mean. Revive the 2012 MacBook Pro design with its thick but accessible, repairable, tough-as-a-tank system.
My 2012 MBP has a massive dent in one corner from being dropped onto Frankfurt Airport's hard, stone floor: the aluminum deformed, but neither the screen nor any other component was harmed. I've spilled an embarrassing amount of beer, water, and champagne onto the keyboard and drained each out the optical drive; it still keeps on ticking. Why would I buy a Cook-era MBP whose useless touch-bar will fail due to heat issues? How would I deal with all the dongles?
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).
... 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 $1000+ for a phone that's just marginally better than the one I currently own.
Were Apple to spend a bunch of their cash on research and come up with new features that people wanted, they could jump start the market again. But, that's not happening.
I bet if they added headphone jacks again, the new phones would sell like hotcakes. Who wants to upgrade when there's a huge decrease in functionality?
@yorgasor nailed it.
The iPhone was an iPod that could make phone calls first and foremost. Somehow that was forgotten and those Audiophiles among us have slowly become increasingly annoyed with Apple as they have:
- Taken away the Headphone jack
- Destroyed the usability of iTunes as a Jukebox (I mean seriously it turned into an App Store Device management system)
- Caused Massive AppleID Identity Crisis As Apple tried to conflate iCloud with Me.com/Mac.com and iTunes DRM Log ins
- Arbitrarily and without my authorization erased all my local music from my iPhone in a Vain attempt to get me to Stream from the Cloud Driving my Data Rates into the Sky while simultaneously putting all my music into buffer-hell
- Artificially Kept Storage capacity behind the curve of progress, We should have Terrabytes of local storage by now, But NOOOOOOO That goes against their motivation for a cloud ($Subscription)
Sigh..... Stallman was right..... I should just chunk my iPhone 6s and just go back to a moto Razr.....
>>... 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.
Apple should be very concerned about who is making negative statements about Apple products today.
In the past it was mostly hate-anything-Apple-trolls, but today many of the 'Apple has lost it's way',"Apple is crap', ' Apple is way overpriced' complaints are now coming from past Apple customers who do not see any valid reason to spend $2000+ to upgrade their old 2010 iMac or 2012 Macbook Pro to an inferior product that has no function keys, a mouse that has a charging port on the bottom, fewer ports, and keyboards that feel like you are typing on jello. For that much money you expect something that stands out from the rest, but their repeat customers just don't see Apple as having those products or the perception of having those stand-out products anymore.
Look at their greed: they release looooong overdue Macbook Air and macMinis with mediocre upgraded specs and less ports in late 2018, then jack up those prices by $300. Pure blatant greed.
And the phones are too damned big.
My iPhone SE does all I need , and it fits comfortably in my pocket. These new monster arse things are of zero interest to me. I had upgraded every 2 years, but there was no upgrade path that interested me, so I will keep my SE until it dies and will probably have to go Android to get what I want.
But its NOT just the phones.
Apples financial issues are probably down to a loss of trust with the consumer.
Sure, I trust Apple more with my Data than Google, Facebook or Amazon, but I am talking about trust in their products.
Mac mini, languished for years
Mac Pro, languished for years, and still is languishing
Airport, DOA
Time Capsule DOA
OSX Server, so many bits deprecated my next “upgrade” will be an Intel NUC running Ubuntu
Wireless charger, MIA
Took how many years to make a wireless extended keyboard
Buy an overpriced USB-C power supply and Apple does not even supply the cable
Automator has languished for years
Apple script has languished for years
And for me personally
Siri for the ATV4 in New Zealand, the ONLY Siri compatible device in NZ that does not actually support Siri
HomePod, completely missing in action in NZ, made WORSE by the fact the NZ online store is the exactly same building as the Aus Online Store
All the iPhones are now too big, when my SE dies it will be Android as my only option
New Zealand did not get any iTunes bonus like the US, Australia, EU and others did, that’s Apple telling us to F**k Off, you are irrelevant , last time I saw iTunes cards discounted was about 4-5 years ago. We used to buy them as stocking fillers for the kids, we have not bought any for 4-5 years now.
Piss poor design decisions
Headphone sockets on the rear right side (of laptops that still have them)
Wireless mouse, you got to have it looking like a dead turtle to charge it, why not have it plugged into the front so you can use it and charge it.
Try turning text 90 in Numbers, so much for that font technology.
The USB-C cable supplied is power only, not USB-C data and not Thunderbolt 3, and USB-C cables are not thunderbolt 3 either, but they all look the same
Laptop keyboard, this generations Apple III
Laptops non upgradeable, RAM or SSD
Laptops with ZERO standard ports (USB-A, Ethernet, etc) forcing everyone to buy bloody dongles
Get off the bloody “Thin” bandwagon, how thin a computer/phone has been has NEVER been part of my buying decision, that’s pure marketing wank , reminiscent of the MHz wars
I know lots of people who have gone down the Hackintosh routine, if only so migrating to Windows can be done gradually
Me, I have free access for home to the Microsoft suite of software as well as the Adobe software.
Do I dump Final Cut 7 which has served me well for my home moves, and head to Adobe ?, because to be frank I have little faith that Apple is all in on its software for OSX anymore.
And to be brutal, its getting damned hard to justify Apples prices, combine that with the loss of trust that Apple is actually going to support any particular piece of hardware or software and you get a slump in sales.
Me, everything is working, so I will wait and see, but with what I have played with so far, Ubuntu is looking like a good option.
This year will tell if its a blip, or a slide.
But unless Apple realises that FUNCTION is actually more important than FORM, they they are screwed, and currently they have no one championing function.
Lots of people care.
EVERY Mac I have owned (except for the 512KE) I upgraded the RAM and the storage.
I can buy a 2TB SSD for about the cost to upgrade from 256GB to 512GB at Apple prices, I do NOT want to pay Apples extra 400% markup.
Apples biggest issue is that they can no longer be trusted to make choices that are consumer friendly.
I would have bought the bottom end 15" MBP and upgraded it like I did the last time, but I can't.
I wold have upgraded my iPhone SE, but they don't make a phone the size of the SE anymore
I would upgrade my Final Cut Pro software, but I don't think Apple is in it for the long haul, better to jump ship before it gets harder to do
Apple does not sell the HomePod in New Zealand, I am moving away from iTunes.
I get a free 1TB cloud storage from MS and from Adobe, there is no way I am paying Apple anything.
OSX server is so deprecated that I need to move to Linux now
Apple has become all glitz, and no function.
Steve is NOT coming back this time to Save Apple from its self.
Yes, they do. If you run a business, the repair policies are insane. Dell will have parts or visit onsite within 24 hours. Apple make you go do a store (in a different city, we didn't have one), or send it off through an authorised repair company, and it will take two weeks to turn it around. I worked in a university in a group which was primarily Mac-based. A couple of years ago, the funding bodies who fund academic research banned the purchase of Mac hardware with their funds, the justification being that it wasn't cost effective and it was wasting valuable money which could be spent better on alternatives. And to be honest, they aren't wrong, are they. If I have a laptop like a Dell, HP or Thinkpad, I can replace the keyboard using a vendor-supplied replacement in just a few minutes. Apple now rivet the keyboard to the case, requiring both to be replaced. It's not even screwed on. That's unreasonable. If I need to replace the screen, I can get replacement screen parts. But Apple require the whole lid assembly to be replaced in its entirely because it's all glued together. That's equally unreasonable and wasteful of materials. That's just two points. But the entire systems made by Apple are like that. It all adds up to expensive hardware which is not repairable or manageable at the scale of a medium or large organisation. We used to have one full-time staff member who dealt solely with Mac imaging and facilitating hardware repairs. If you're wanting to use a computer as a business system, rather than a personal toy, you need better than what Apple can offer. They have never really made much effort to cater for this type of use in their entire history. This stuff ends up costing companies a lot of money they could spend more productively on other things.