First Signs That The iPhone 8 Is Not Selling Emerge
The first signs that Apple’s new iPhone 8 is not delivering the demand that carriers expected have started to emerge.
In Australia expected demand for the new Apple offering is down at retailers such as JB Hi Fi, Telstra, Optus and Vodafone.
In the giant US market where Apple has always performed well AT&T overnight issued a preliminary some third-quarter financials, it revealed that 900,000 fewer consumers purchased a phone replacement.
The period included 10 days of sales for the Apple’s iPhone 8 models which the carrier was expecting to be in big demand.
Observers claim that ‘If the iPhone 8 had been a hit out of the gate, AT&T’s upgrade number would have fallen less dramatically.
Compared with two or three years ago, there has been a notable decline in the percentage of U.S. mobile customers who buy a new phone in a given year.
Some analysts had expected new smartphones from Apple to push up the share of people who upgrade to new phones, after several years of trending downward.
But Jefferies analysts estimate that AT&T’s disclosure implies an upgrade rate of roughly 4 percent in the quarter — meaning that is the share of AT&T’s existing customers on rolling contracts who opted to trade up to a newer smartphone.
Other observers claim that Apple may have misfired with the iPhone 8. Since Apple released the iPhone 8 and its more-expensive iPhone X sibling, investors have alternated between worry and encouragement.
The initial professional reviews of the iPhone 8 weren’t over the moon. Particularly when compared with the iPhone X, the iPhone 8 seemed like the less-capable kid sister, and not much of an improvement on the prior year’s iPhones.
Many analysts have said people who are most likely to buy new iPhones will wait until November or later, when the iPhone X model will go on sale. The optimistic take is that slow initial sales of the iPhone 8 line are a good sign for Apple, because it may mean more people will instead buy the more-expensive iPhone
Shira Ovide writing for Bloomberg said that Apple absolutely needs the iPhone 8 to sell well. There is a limited supply of essential parts for the iPhone X models, and the company can’t make enough to cover the 250 million or so new iPhones expected to be sold globally in the next year.
The iPhone 8 needs to be a palatable Plan B for those people who can’t get their hands on the limited number of iPhone X models, or can’t stomach the $1,860 price tag.
In a recent Morgan Stanley survey, 34 percent of respondents said they planned to purchase a new iPhone said they would opt for the iPhone X. (A majority of respondents in China — arguably the most important growth market for Apple right now — said they planned to buy the iPhone X model.)
