The iPhone X was sold out for about a month after its early November launch, but demand has significantly dropped since then, reports have claimed. A slew of stories in the past few weeks said that Apple has been reducing iPhone X component orders considerably for the current quarter, with Samsung Display taking a significant hit as a result. Some went as far as to say the iPhone X will be discontinued this fall once its replacements come in.
A new research note now says that Apple may need more than six months to sell as many iPhone X units as it did during the Christmas quarter last year.
Citi’s forecast is the most pessimistic yet, Business Insider notes. Analysts expect Apple to sell 14 million iPhone X units in the first quarter of the year instead of 27 million, and only 7 million the following quarter. That would be a total of 21 million iPhone X units, significantly below the original estimates.
The same analysts note that Apple sold 32 million iPhone X units during the December quarter. Apple never mentioned actual iPhone X sales numbers for the period, but everyone assumed a large chunk of the 77.3 million iPhone units sold in the Christmas quarter were iPhone X devices. That’s because the average selling price of the iPhone moved up considerably for the period. What’s interesting is that the iPhone X has been on sale for less than two months during the quarter. If Citi’s estimates are accurate, Apple will need well over six months to sell as many iPhone X units as it sold in just two months last year.
While Citi dropped its iPhone X sales estimates for the first half of the year, the analysts still expect Apple to sell more iPhones than during the same period last year. Citi expects a 7% sales increase year on year, that’s 92 million iPhone units sold in the first two quarters of 2018 compared to 85 million for the first half of 2017.
The iPhone X’s high price tag and the perceived lack of novel features are the main reasons preventing consumers from buying the handset.
