iPhone X News: Sales Continue to Struggle as Notch Gets Some Much-Needed Love
The iPhone X is not doing as well as Apple hoped.
The most expensive iPhone yet, which was the Cupertino giant's decade anniversary smartphone offering, is struggling to exceed sales performance expectations.
In a leaked report by Mirabaud Securities at international banking and finance group co-head Neil Campling, the expert went so far as to say that the iPhone X is "dead."
Get Our Latest News for FREE
According to him, Apple sorely overestimated the demand, which meant all the units they produced will likely be the ones they will ever need.
"The simple problem with X is that it is too expensive," Campling said. "Consumers are turning their backs on high-priced smartphones," he went on to say.
Indeed, the number one issue users have with the iPhone is the $1,000 price tag, which is made to look all the more unreasonable to users considering there are flagships out there that are priced way below and can still get the job done, complete with top-tier specs.
The OnePlus 5T immediately comes to mind. The handset offers a good camera setup, a clear-cut software experience, and a hulking hardware setup (Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 plus 6 GB of random access memory) for half the price iPhone X.
Campling said that the iPhone suppliers TSMC and AMS are taking a huge hit because of the sales dive. The former is stuck with the most inventory stockpiles it ever had to deal with while the latter is looking at a 35 percent revenue decline, which is almost double than what was expected.
This is just the latest report about the iPhone X's failure to keep users interested. The trusted Apple insider Ming-Chi Kuo said last January that the device will be canceled due to poor sales with production to conclude this summer.
Consumer Intelligence Research Partners reveals in their latest research that the latest iPhone makes up just 16 percent of the company's smartphone sales so far this year, which means that there are just as many people buying older iPhones as there are for the iPhone X.
In addition, the share for the notch-sporting device and the other current models, the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, are only at 60 percent, which is significantly lower compared to the 2015 share, which was at 78 percent.
The iPhone X was not as poorly received when it first launched though. Thirty-five percent of Apple's profit for the fourth quarter of last year was from the device alone.
Qz.com believes that another issue that's causing this is that users see little to no real value to the features being added to the latest iPhones such as the wireless charging and the Face ID technology, which was the main attraction in the iPhone X. For many, these additions do not justify a $1,000 shell-out for a notch-toting slab.
The publication posits that users are more likely to buy and continue to buy new iPhones for the hardware ecosystem like the Apple Watch and AirPods.
Despite the string of bad news, though, Apple continues to be a big influence in the mobile industry. After the company came out with the new iPhone X, notch a-blazing, manufacturers were quick to follow suit.
Majority of the Android flagships users will see this year will have the same notch, including ones from big players like LG, OnePlus, and Huawei.
While the notch was deemed mostly divisive as some thought it was a bit too obtrusive, a study by Creative Strategies reveals that majority of iPhone X owners users are actually happy with how the device looks even with such design choice.
The research shows that 85 percent of the participants are "very satisfied with the product," which suggests that the notch is not as big of a deal as it appears to be after all.
It is to be noted that the result could easily change if users who did not buy the iPhone X primarily because of the notch are taken into account.
