Roger Fingas
A report suggesting that Apple is cutting iPhone X production in half for the March quarter is off the mark, according to an executive at one of the company's Japanese suppliers.
"Our understanding is that it [the cut] is not that great," Murata vice chairman Yoshitaka Fujita told Reuters. Murata is believed to be helping Apple with liquid crystal polymer-based flexible circuit boards.
On Monday Japan's Nikkei said Apple had informed suppliers it was slashing March-quarter production from a predicted 40 million to 20 million, on the basis of slow holiday sales in critical markets like the U.S., China, and Europe. Apple typically ramps down iPhone production in the post-holiday season, but not so sharply, and the story dealt a blow to stock prices.
Some watchers have been concerned that the iPhone X's $999 base price tag is putting off shoppers. Apple also launched the cheaper iPhone 8 and 8 Plus this fall, perhaps signalling its own worries that the X would have limited appeal. The X was also beset by production bottlenecks however, for which it might have wanted the iPhone 8 line as backup.
The cost of the iPhone X is linked mainly to its edge-to-edge, 5.8-inch OLED display, and the TrueDepth camera, which uses sensitive 3D facial recognition components. Those technologies should eventually become standard across Apple products, but only once economies of scale push manufacturing expenses down.
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Andrew O'Hara
6 Comments
Nikkei has been spectacularly wrong in this exact same nonsense since at least 2013.
Well it's selling well! I don't see the reason Apple would do this...
How do we even know it’s a cut? And a cut from what? Apple never provided guidance for March quarter.
Funny how this crap, the nikee thing, always somehow comes out a few days before earnings, these are not errors it is criminal.
You know what else casts doubt on the claims? The things are everywhere. The last time a rode the subway, I saw three—the man next to me, the woman sitting across from him, and the guy standing right in front of me. The guy standing looked expensively dressed, like the kind of person who you might expect to spring for a very pricey phone, but the other two just looked very average. And those were only the ones I happened to notice because they were only a few feet away and directly in my line of sight.