2016 has been a somewhat disappointing year for Apple, but that’s with the caveat that the company’s growth was unsustainable. One way or another, the technology giant was eventually going to come back down to earth, and that’s exactly what happened over the past twelve months.
Still, despite the fact that sales have been consistently falling throughout 2016, the iPhone 7 was Apple’s chance to stabilize. Based on recent reports, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the iPhone 7 wasn’t enough to revitalize the market.
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Sources from Taiwan’s handset supply chain reportedly told DigiTimes this week that Apple is reducing orders for the iPhone 7 in the wake of decreasing demand for the new flagship. Those sources say that the initial surge of demand was thanks in large part to excitement over the Jet Black model and the battery explosion crisis that forced Samsung to issue a worldwide recall for the Galaxy Note 7.
Now that the market has calmed down and the sheen of Apple’s latest color option has worn off, “demand for the iPhone 7 devices in China and other markets has scaled down significantly since their launch less than three months ago,” the sources claim. “Suppliers and consumers alike” have already turned their attention to the 2017 version of the iPhone, which is expected to be a major leap forward rather than yet another iterative evolution of the iPhone 6.
As DigiTimes notes: “Market rumors have indicated that the next generation iPhone will come with OLED displays, glass cases, dual-lens cameras, enhanced CPUs, and advanced sensors, while supporting mixed reality (MR) and wireless charging technologies.”
So with the iPhone 8 already dominating the conversation, despite the fact that we’re only a few months out from the launch of the iPhone 7, sources in the supply chain “are mostly conservative about the shipment outlook for the iPhone 7 in the first half of 2017,” expecting to ship 5 million fewer iPhones from January to June than they did from July to December this year.
Looks like Ming-Chi Kuo knew what he was talking about.
