Just a day after officially unveiling its latest iPhone models, the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus (plus an update to its smartwatch offering), Apple apparently has no plans of disclosing the initial weekend sales numbers of its newest flagship devices. As seen in previous iPhone releases, the company has always been looking forward to highlighting the opening sales figures of its newest smartphones, but it appears that it will not be happening this year. Moreover, the tech giant is confident that both devices will be selling out.
As told by an Apple spokesperson to Reuters, the company has now reached a point where they now have a clear idea whether their smartphones will be selling out. The spokesperson further noted that opening weekend sales are largely dependent on initial supply, not necessarily on demand, and Apple has simply made a decision to no longer treat initial sales numbers as a good enough measure for its investors and customers.
Quite naturally, this new development should elicit mixed reactions from the industry and from consumers. There are those who see this as Apple just being cocky about, well, being Apple. Ever since they were introduced almost a decade ago, iPhone devices have always been best selling products, and Apple may just have decided that screw it, why bother with initial sales when we know it is going to be a hit anyway.
Then there are those who might get a little suspicious. Sure, claiming that your product will sell out is such an easy thing to do, especially for somebody like Apple, but not disclosing exact figures does seem like the company is trying to hide something. Why boast that your product will sell a lot and then not bother telling everybody just how many you sold? And many may suspect that maybe, just maybe, Apple is not that confident after all about selling that many iPhone 7 units (especially in light of the headphone jack controversy), and not divulging sales figures lets it get away with actually just having okay sales instead of mind blowing numbers.
The thing is: we may never know the real reason behind this.
Apple will begin accepting preorders for the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus on September 9th, with the devices officially landing in store shelves everywhere this coming September 16th. This year’s iPhone handsets offered some new features while doing away with familiar ones. The bigger iPhone 7 Plus for instance comes with a dual camera configuration, while both new models also feature an IP67 rating for water and dust proofing, improved onboard storage configurations, an enhanced touch sensitive Home button, stereo speakers, and some hardware upgrades. But gone are the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, and users will now have to resort to the Lightning connector when plugging in their audio accessories. Speaking of audio accessories, Apple has also introduced AirPods, wireless earbuds that might need some getting used to.
