Apple warns investors it won't announce iPhone 7 opening weekend sales

Apple will break tradition and won't announce launch sales of the upcoming iPhone 7, the company announced on Thursday, due to demand for the next-generation handset outstripping supply.

"In years past, we've announced how many new iPhones had been sold as of the first weekend following launch," Apple said in a statement to CNBC "But as we have expanded our distribution through carriers and resellers to hundreds of thousands of locations around the world, we are now at a point where we know before taking the first customer pre-order that we will sell out of iPhone 7.

"These initial sales will be governed by supply, not demand, and we have decided that it is no longer a representative metric for our investors and customers. Therefore we won't be releasing a first-weekend number any longer. We are reiterating the financial guidance September quarter that we provided on July 26."

Last year, the launch of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus moved a record 13 million units in their first three days. The iPhone 6s series went on to provide Apple its best-ever quarter in the holiday 2015 season, before sales began to cool off in 2016 and led to the first-ever year-over-year decline in iPhone sales.

When new iPhones launch, officials at Apple are usually quick to point out that they are selling as many handsets as they can make, with demand greatly outstripping supply. Apple's comments on Thursday make it clear that it expects the pattern to continue with this year's iPhone 7 launch.

Preorders for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus begin Friday at 12:01 a.m. Pacific, 3:01 a.m. Eastern. The device will find its way into the hands of consumers a week later, on Sept. 16.

For more, see AppleInsider's hands-on look at the iPhone 7 from this week's media briefing in San Francisco.

70 Comments

jungmark 6927 comments · 13 Years

About 8 years ago

Good. No more BS analysis from "analysts ".

radarthekat 3902 comments · 12 Years

Hmm, let me get this straight. Apple's market cap, today, is $570b. In Sept 2012 after the iPhone 5 intro, it reached $665b.

So the Apple of today, with

$150b more in cash,

with the iPad mini,

iPad Pro (in two sizes),

larger screen iPhones,

the retina MacBook,

a game-playing AppleTV,

the Apple Watch,

Apple Music,

Apple Pay,

a car on the way,
partnerships with IBM, Cisco, and SAP,
and recent hints dropped by Cook about Entering the AR segment

and probably a few things I left out...

today's Apple is somehow worth $95b less than the Apple of Sept 2012?

I'm not seeing how that makes any sense.

And so I'll remain long.

phone-ui-guy 1018 comments · 18 Years

Makes sense to me, but I can see the doom and gloom crowd running with this and spewing hate that Apple won't release them because no one wants the phone. So we get to put up with this nonsense until the quarterly report I guess.

cali 3494 comments · 10 Years

Makes sense but I was excited to hear launch numbers :(

Oh and doom articles incoming even though no other company shares sales numbers.

radarthekat said:

Hmm, let me get this straight. Apple's market cap, today, is $570b. In Sept 2012 after the iPhone 5 intro, it reached $665b.
So the Apple of today, with

$150b more in cash,
with the iPad mini,
iPad Pro (in two sizes),
larger screen iPhones,
the retina MacBook,
a game-playing AppleTV,
the Apple Watch,
Apple Music,
Apple Pay,
a car on the way,
partnerships with IBM, Cisco, and SAP,
and recent hints dropped by Cook about Entering the AR segment
and probably a few things I left out...

today's Apple is somehow worth $95b less than the Apple of Sept 2012?

I'm not seeing how that makes any sense.

And so I'll remain long.

Don't forget the add in their debt when you cite cash. Also, the market value and market cap is more about growth and not as much about other metrics. If they are growing, people run up the prices to where they think the true value of the stock will be. When they are struggling with growth, it comes crashing down to at or below where they are actually at. Why buy-in and run the price up if they are not growing much? Yeah the dividend helps, but other investors will chase the next stop with high growth.