Noise Surrounding iPhone Demand Is Getting Loud
Hello everyone. Welcome to a new week. We kick things off with the latest on iPhone demand. Unfortunately, there’s been a significant uptick in the amount of noise surrounding the topic. Let’s discuss.
Noise Surrounding iPhone Demand Is Getting Loud
With the article headline “Exclusive: Apple cuts iPhone 18 Pro orders due to soft demand,” here’s Nikkei Asia:
"Apple has told some of its suppliers to cut production of components for its newly launched iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, after soaring memory chip costs forced price increases that have dampened consumer demand.
Multiple people familiar with the matter told Nikkei Asia that the Silicon Valley-based tech giant has turned more conservative on shipments since early September, with two of them saying that component orders for this month have been slashed by at least 15% compared to what was originally requested, due to weaker-than-expected market demand.
'In October alone, we are seeing orders from Apple reducing by 15% to 20% for both the premium models; we don't know how things would develop from here,' said one of the executive-level sources. The order cuts will affect production volumes for some, but not all, suppliers in October due to differing production lead times, and it is not immediately clear whether Apple will make further adjustments from November onward.”
The framing Nikkei Asia relied on for its article didn’t pass the smell test. The publication ran with a thesis that consumer demand for the iPhone 18 Pro models has “dampened.” In an attempt to solidify its thesis, Nikkei Asia leveraged some comments from a bearish sell-side Apple analyst and an anonymous source described as a “third person with direct knowledge.”
There is a massive hole in Nikkei Asia’s “softer” iPhone 18 Pro volumes thesis:
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