Apple Alerts Suppliers to Weakening Demand for iPhones Ahead of the Holidays

Apple CEO Tim Cook is going to be getting a lump of coal, er, cash in his stocking this holiday, but it might be a slightly smaller lump than previous years, according to a report from Bloomberg. The titanic phone company that also makes computers has already been dealing with supply chain issues and chip shortages, like every other tech company in the world, but it’s now seeing interest in its flagship product wane too, according to people familiar with the matter.

As Bloomberg notes, this comes on top of the company having to scale back iPhone production due to a shortage of parts, which saw it reduce its production goal for the year by 10 million phones. The company was reportedly hoping to make up for the shortfall in 2022 when the chip shortage hopefully eased a bit, but it now appears that might not ever come to fruition if demand remains soft into next year. As The Verge reported previously, Apple suffered up to $6 billion in losses in the previous quarter due to not being able to produce enough products to satisfy demand for both its phones and computers.

Despite this setback, analysts still predict a record holiday quarter for Apple, with estimates of up to $117.9 billion in revenue for the final months of the year, so about one billion dollars per-day. Not too shabby. This would represent a six percent increase in sales for the quarter.

Some configurations of Apple’s newly updated MacBook Pro laptops are back-ordered into 2022 already.

Though it’s impossible to accurately narrow down the reason for the softening demand given all of the current market forces at play, it’s entirely possible consumers are worried several factors: inflation, the pandemic, the economy, or maybe they just don’t feel the need to upgrade. Steve Wozniak himself even said himself the iPhone 13 doesn’t feel any different than the iPhone 12. Bloomberg writes that some consumers are just fed up with shipping delays, so they’ve decided to just hold onto whatever phone they have now until the situation improves.

Still, it’s seemingly uncharted territory for Apple, which makes over half its revenue from iPhone sales. However, the iPhone 13 was simply a revamp of the iPhone 12, as opposed to an all-new design with blockbuster features. it did add 120Hz ProMotion displays to the iPhone 13, but that technology first appeared in 2017. , the phones are largely the same as the previous models in terms of features, though they do include Apple’s newest A15 processor.

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