Apple assembly partner Foxconn says December revenues down, blames 'consumer category products'

Apple's primary assembly partner, Foxconn, said on Thursday that it saw revenues for the month of December drop 8.3 percent year-over-year, likely a reflection of weak iPhone demand.

Revenues slid to $20.12 billion versus $21.91 billion in 2017, Reuters reported. It's the first such decline since last February.

"The main reason is that the fall for consumer category products was rather big," a Foxconn representative said, without providing detail on which clients or products were the culprits.

Foxconn is heavily dependent on Apple orders, and the iPhone in turn is Apple's biggest product. Manufacturing is usually most intense in late summer and the fall as the two companies prepare to launch new models then cope with holiday demand.

Apple CEO Tim Cook confessed to soft iPhone sales earlier this month, pointing his finger mostly at the Chinese market. He put lesser blame on other markets, as well as factors like "foreign exchange headwinds," fewer carrier subsidies, and even discounted battery replacements, which some have called an admission that Apple depends on degraded batteries to spur upgrades.

In a recent interview Cook denied suggestions that the iPhone XR has been a flop, saying it has been the bestselling iPhone model since its launch. That may simply be bad news, however, for the iPhone XS and XS Max.

All three phones have come under fire for being too expensive. An XR starts at $749, $100 more than Apple's once-standard pricetag. An XS is at least $999, and an XS Max is $1,099 — especially rich shoppers can spend as much as $1,449, more than some Macs.

5 Comments

ksec 18 Years · 1502 comments

About 5 years ago

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/12/11/tsmc-and-foxconn-revenues-up-contrary-to-dour-iphone-supply-chain-forecasts

bshank 7 Years · 257 comments

Who has claimed Apple depends on depleted batteries to spur upgrades? The claim of planned obsolescence is that Apple makes the phones not work on purpose to spur upgrades. A battery is something consumable. Batteries cannot and never have been made to last forever. Apple has long offered battery replacement as a service in store. If a person cannot comprehend the fact that batteries don’t last forever they probably shouldn’t be buying a smartphone.

Latko 7 Years · 398 comments

bshank said:

Who has claimed Apple depends on depleted batteries to spur upgrades? The claim of planned obsolescence is that Apple makes the phones not work on purpose to spur upgrades. A battery is something consumable. Batteries cannot and never have been made to last forever. Apple has long offered battery replacement as a service in store. If a person cannot comprehend the fact that batteries don’t last forever they probably shouldn’t be buying a smartphone.

Cook’s appreciation for the masses would have required educating them.
Only giving room to the idea of throttling (while in fact there was the opposite strategy) makes for some of the worst PR seen in Apple history

Latko said:

bshank said:

Who has claimed Apple depends on depleted batteries to spur upgrades? The claim of planned obsolescence is that Apple makes the phones not work on purpose to spur upgrades. A battery is something consumable. Batteries cannot and never have been made to last forever. Apple has long offered battery replacement as a service in store. If a person cannot comprehend the fact that batteries don’t last forever they probably shouldn’t be buying a smartphone.

Cook’s appreciation for the masses would have required educating them.
Only giving room to the idea of throttling (while in fact there was the opposite strategy) makes for some of the worst PR seen in Apple history

Silly claim, unless you are a clickbait reader. People in the stores have been mostly happy to replace batteries and keep their iPhone 6 and 6s devices running longer. Again, if people haven’t had enough life experience to know batteries don’t last forever it’s not Tim Cook’s job to educate such sheltered people. Two years ago the complaints were the phones were shutting down suddenly, due to increased impedance on an older battery, and Apple came up with a solution to prevent that.

Share Your Thoughts on our Forums ->