February 2022 • Macworld 15news, especially if it’s
negative. But also as
usual, these reports
should be taken with
a grain of salt. I’m not
doubting the veracity
of Bloomberg’s
“people familiar with
the matter”, but it’s
something like a
supply-chain version
of telephone. Every
year about this time
someone writes an
article about how
iPhones sales are slumping because
Apple is chopping orders.
I’m quite sure that Apple is
indeed warning that it may need to
cut January orders, as Bloomberg
reported. After months of supply
chain issues that took a $6 billion toll
on Apple’s fourth-quarter revenue,
Apple was expected to have a weeks-
long backlog of iPhone demand that
stretched into January. Bloomberg
reports that Apple “is now informing
its vendors that those orders may
not materialize” due to “weakened”
demand. In a nutshell, the report says
that now that people can buy iPhones,
no one wants them anymore.
There are numerous reasons
why that might be the case. The
easiest explanation is that Apple
overestimated the demand for the
iPhone 13. While it’s an excellent
phone, it’s not a huge upgrade over
the iPhone 12, which introduced a new
design and 5G, so some buyers might
opt for 2020’s phone instead and
save a few pounds.
There’s also evidence that Apple
shifted production to get more
iPhones into more hands. While
these are currently shipping about
a week out on Apple.com/uk, the
ninth-gen iPad, iPad Air and iPad mini
are basically sold out everywhere.
While it could be that those two
products are the most popular
devices Apple currently sells, it’s more
likely the company sacrificed iPadThe iPhone 13 is reportedly suffering ‘weakened’ demand.