Apple's New iPhone X Has A Frightful Surprise

Apple AAPL -0.07%’s hotly anticipated iPhone X will launch soon, right? Wrong. Thanks to a highly credible new leak, the reality is everyone who wants the most radical and expensive iPhone ever made is in for a nasty surprise...

‘Great Secret Features’ and ‘Nasty Surprises’ are my regular columns investigating the best features / biggest problems hidden behind the headlines.
 





MacRumors brings us this depressing news after it obtained a new report from Ming Chi Kuo, widely regarded as the ‘best Apple analyst on the planet’. Kuo states that iPhone X stock will be extremely limited until well into 2018 and that will cause Apple to miss its widely predicted 2017 “super cycle”.

Why? Kuo says Apple has run into significant problems mass producing the ‘TrueDepth’ camera sensor the iPhone X uses for its Face ID facial recognition system. Face ID controversially replaced Apple’s much loved Touch ID fingerprint sensor and also resulted in the polarising ‘notch’ at the top of the iPhone X’s display, so this is unlikely to endear it further with iPhone fans.

Consequently Kuo believes sales of Apple’s new 2017 iPhones (iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X) are unlikely to break any records with total iPhone sales for 2017 coming in at 210-220 million units. Apple managed 231M in 2015 and this fell to 211M in 2016, but the radically redesigned iPhone X was meant to change everything.






The better news is Kuo states iPhone X production issues will be “significantly addressed” during the first three months of 2018 and this will see shipments “pick up strongly”. Combined with Apple’s 2018 iPhone upgrades (which Kuo intriguingly describes as “more competitive” than the 2017 models), Kuo believes total 2018 iPhone sales will produce a super cycle of 245-255M units.

It is worth pointing out stock of new iPhones is often limited straight after launch, but never to this extent. For example, the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus hold Apple’s opening weekend sales record shifting a massive 13M units. Kuo believes iPhone X stock could be limited to a total of just 2-4M units until January.

All of which means I will double down on my previous tip: if you are lucky enough to get an iPhone X before Christmas the most fiscally responsible thing to do is put it on eBay. You'll probably be able to buy three with your profits in January.