Reuters has recently published a report saying that for this year, Apple will be shipping 80 million units of its new 2018 iPhone models. While still considered a large number, 80 million units would be around 20 percent fewer than the shipment volume the tech giant had planned a year ago. Reuters picked up the news from Japanese financial daily Nikkei, who cited industry resources.
Apparently, the number two mobile manufacturer in the face of the planet (second only to industry leader Samsung) has decided to extend a request to its army of component makers, effectively asking them to produce about 20 percent fewer parts for the new iPhone models set to debut later this year. Although Apple has not confirmed it yet, industry watchers are fully expecting the company to release three new models this year, similar to what it did in 2017, wherein it launched the best selling iPhone X, as well as the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus.
So why the reduction in the planned production output? According to Nikkei, it may have something to do with the decreasing enthusiasm among today’s mobile users for new models or upgrades of recent flagship device offerings. Indeed, much has already been said about how the worldwide market for smartphones has been struggling to register annual growth in the last few years, and phone makers are understandably are becoming more cautious now, even those big global brands like the mighty Apple.
It is also quite possible that Apple may have just been too optimistic in 2017, with regards to estimating the volume of iPhone units it can ship or sell. Sure, last year’s iPhone X and the iPhone 8 models were not flops by any measure, but entering deep into the year 2018, Apple may have found itself with some excess inventory.
Apple typically does not divulge exact sales figures for each iPhone model it releases, but reports indicated that it finished its fiscal year (which ended last September 30th) selling 217 million units of its smartphone devices. On top of that, it is generally known that until now, the tech giant is still producing significant quantities of earlier iPhone models.
Also, despite a fairly controversial series of months in the first half of this year (mainly due to Batterygate), Apple still managed to sell more than 129 million units of its iPhones during the past couple of quarters. But it is worth mentioning that when compared to the volume of sales around the same time last year, there has not been much year over year growth.
