Apple has reportedly notified its suppliers that the iPhone X production target will be halved. The original plan by the American smartphone giant was to produce at least 40 million units of the iPhone X for the first quarter of 2018 but that figure has now been revised down to 20 million. The reports come barely days after analysts speculated that Apple will kill off the iPhone X once the second-generation model comes to market this year.
One of the mains reasons for this is said to be the price. The iPhone X is the most expensive phone ever made by the Apple. Analysts believe that the cost is not sustainable and reducing it will only sabotage the sales of other devices. The only course of action is to retire the model and this could happen sooner than we think.
It’s not yet clear how much the iPhone X sold during the holiday period. Although Apple gave the phone a facelift and added new futuristic features to it, the cost has turned customers away. Additionally, the iPhone X came with a total new control scheme, missing the home button. Users would have to learn how the phone works again and this proved somewhat hectic.
Apple will release its first quarter earnings report this week on Thursday and these numbers will give us a closer look on the performance of the iPhone X. Apple reportedly plans to release three iPhone models in 2018. The company is set to release a 5.8-inch and a 6.5-inch display model which will feature the OLED display technology that was also present in the iPhone X. The company is also planning to release another 6.1-inch model that will come with an LCD screen. The new models are all expected to have the TrueDepth camera and a facial recognition system.
Such features will put the models in direct competition with the iPhone X and it’s very likely that consumers will go for the cheaper option. As a result, Apple doesn’t see the need to put 40 million iPhone X devices into the market. Nonetheless, the company is still on course to produce the projected iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone 7 devices for the first quarter. Apple is looking to produce 30 million devices and there is no indication at the moment that this position has changed.
Our attempt to reach Apple for a comment on this story was fruitless. Cutting down the production of iPhone X in half is however a big story. It’s a story that could be interpreted in many ways but one thing remains very clear, the iPhone X has not performed as well as Apple thought. We will have to wait for the quarterly fiscal report that comes out on Thursday and see if we can make sense of the numbers, especially now that the future of the iPhone X, one of the most hyped smartphones, is unknown.
