Credit: IDG
Happy Cutmas, everyone!
Yes, it's that time of year again as Bloomberg (the outfit that ran the highly refuted story The Big Hack) is here to remind us to put some cookie cutters out for Father Cutmas: Apple Tells Suppliers iPhone Demand Has Slowed as Holidays Near.
Okay, well, surprise, we get these stories every year because sales naturally fall after the big fall release. This time it comes with some added global supply chain garment-rending so let's see if we can follow the logic here. Without taking any dangerous drugs.
Apple Inc., suffering from a global supply crunch, is now confronting a different problem: slowing demand.
Nobody wants iPhones!
…signaling that some consumers have decided against trying to get the hard-to-find item.
We're in the second sentence and we've already careened off Making Sense Blvd., busted through the guardrails and exploded spectacularly over What The Actual Heck Ravine.
No one is buying the phones that Apple cannot make enough of to keep up with demand.
If you wondered why the Macalope drinks… [points accusingly at the quoted sentences above]… this. This is why. Right here. This stuff.
Already, Apple had cut its iPhone 13 production goal for this year by as many as 10 million units, down from a target of 90 million…
So, according to this math, Apple was planning on selling about 80 million units of just the iPhone 13. That's kind of a lot of units.
The company is still on track for a record holiday season…
Nobody wants iPhones. Apple records record holiday season. That… you just… I don't… why…
Apparently the idea here is that Apple is still going to sell gobs of iPhones, it just isn't going to sell the huge gobs that it thought it was going to sell. We know this because Apple is such an open book. And how Apple can be facing slowing demand when it already can't keep up with the current demand is beyond this furry observer.
Long story short, Apple's clearly the biggest loser in all of Loserville. So who's winning? Q3'21 Was a Record Quarter for Foldable Smartphones, Samsung Enjoys a 93% Share per DSCC Report.
Huge quarter for foldable phones! Unbelievable! Just mind-bogglingly large! How big is the winning, you ask? Oh, well, why get into the minutia when it's all right there in the head-
Q3'21 foldable smartphone shipments were larger than the previous four quarters combined and grew 215% Q/Q and 480% Y/Y…
Wow! Well, that's all you need to know, then. Case closed. Big winning. Guess we can just close this tab and go back to watching ASMR TikTok videos with the sound off and…
…to 2.6M phones.
Wait, what?
Yes, the entirety of the foldable phone market is practically a rounding error for Apple. And even at that low level, it's larger than the previous four quarters combined.
Why are we even talking about this? Analysts have been saying that Apple better get on the foldable phone bandwagon (disclaimer: no band, no wagon) quick or BE DOOMED as long ago as 2012. Nine years later, the entire market is maybe 3.5 per cent of Apple's quarterly sales.
It is possible Apple might not ship as many phones as it expected. But that's a number no one really knows, even the company's suppliers. The Macalope must insist that people chillax themselves before they must ax themselves what they're so worked up about.
