How Critics Got the iPhone X ‘Panic’ Story So Very Wrong

[Guest]

Analysts warned that iPhone sales were slumping; they were wrong. Here’s why the iPhone’s continuing to sell.

How Critics Got the iPhone X ‘Panic’ Story So Very Wrong : Read more

 

[Steffen Jobbs]

Apple haters want all of Apple's products to be flops. Proof in point. Apple has sold far more AppleWatches than Amazon has sold Echo devices. Critics say AppleWatch is a huge flop but claim the Echo is a great success. There's something definitely odd going on. Apple is making far more revenue from AppleWatch than Amazon is making from all of its Echo devices. All Echo devices are much, much cheaper than an AppleWatch and Apple is still selling more AppleWatches than Amazon is selling Echo devices. What makes one product a success and another a failure? That's hard to tell. I don't think it should be based on sales numbers alone. It should include how well a product works or how useful it is. I think critics are biased against Apple because Apple products are more expensive than other companies' products.

Reviewers didn't like the iPhone X notch, so they assumed that all consumers would dislike the notch and not buy the iPhone X. Critics said the iPhone X was too expensive, so they assumed no one could afford to buy an iPhone X. All of Apple's so-called failures are usually based on hater's assumptions.

There are other weird beliefs. If any Apple product doesn't sell in huge numbers from the first day or there's no line of people standing in front of Apple stores, the critics will immediately believe that particular product is a failure. Also, if Apple doesn't announce sales numbers for a particular product, it is immediately assumed Apple is hiding a product that is a failure.

 

[jchy0912]

Agreed 100%. I hope this will continue for a long, long time. Great for containing the share price. Apple will use less money to buy more shares at cheaper price for the USD 100 billion shares buyback!

 

[jorge1170xyz]

A 3% YoY growth in iPhone sales is a good accomplishment, but not all too impressive in my view given the current "booming" economic climate. For starters, the World population grows by 1% a year, and the number of people Worldwide who are advancing into a financial situation that could even consider buying an Apple product surely grew by more than 1% (emerging, advancing economies with growing middle classes). Secondly, this year was supposed to be an iPhone "super-cycle" and therefore the fact that there was a small 3% bump could be easily explained by "Pent-up demand" (people who waited out the 7) much more than by newly found enthusiasm for the iPhone in general. Lastly, we are in a massive Worldwide asset bubble right now, where low interest rates are still causing unjustified asset appreciation which in turn causes lots of "unorthodox" wealth to be produced. In times like this, one would EXPECT all those people making large windfalls to spend it on "status symbol" items like iPhones. So, given all those ideal and perfectly-bullish factors in 2018, the fact that iPhone sales only went up 3% is not that really impressive to me. What it tells me is that if/when any leg of that perfect economic stool is removed (or even weakened), YoY gains will not be possible any longer.

 

[Dan Andersen]

The iPhone's 3% YoY growth is particularly impressive in view of the fact that there was an overall *decrease* YoY in worldwide smartphone sales of 5.6% in Q4 2017 according to Gartner.