“A couple of weeks after Apple announced that its holiday quarter earnings would be dramatically lower than expected, Credit Suisse believes this quarter may not bring much cheer either,” Ben Lovejoy reports for 9to5Mac. “The bank expects smartphone production to fall by a massive 19% this quarter.”
In a note to clients, Credit Suisse published estimates showing that global smartphone production is in free-fall, and the bank’s analysts warned that the “bottom not yet in sight.”
Credit Suisse revised down its smartphone production forecast for the final three months of 2018, predicting it will fall by 3% quarter-on-quarter to 357 million units. It said first-quarter output will fall 19% to 289 million units […]
If Credit Suisse’s forecasts prove accurate, it means that first-quarter smartphone production will have fallen for five consecutive years. “It is too early to say whether this news is already fully discounted in share prices, or will continue to have an impact,” it added. — BusinessInsider
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: With Apple pushing promos, discounts, and their GiveBack trade-in program, we’ll have to wait and see if iPhone sees such a large drop-off this quarter.
There might be a market for an iPhone 8s, where s stands for small (version of the 8), priced between the 7 and the 8.
The 8 itself is merely a 7S if you think about it.
There aren’t really any big hardware improvements Apople needs to make to the 8, you know they are too afraid to maintain TouchID after attempting to convince everyone that FaceID is worth the $$$. After two straight years of iPhone X models hype, the 8 remains the best value phone in the lineup for most people. FaceID and OLED have driven up prices while providing no usable benefit that any normal person can detect. In fact, FaceID is much more awkward than TouchID in many situations. All the new features (change for the sake of change) represents processing overhead makes the X models perform no better than 2-3 year olf phones in real world situations. Big Samsung OLED screen results in a heavier phone that needs more battery to achieve no significant improvement in battery life. Better cameras are not enough to overcome the massive price increases and the ugly notch.
If you need a new iPhone, the XR isn’t the “affordable” iPhone; the 8 is. Also, the 8 has a vastly better chance of fitting in your pocket, fitting in inexpensive cases, and fitting with the accessories you already own. Just be sure to put it in a case because the back is glass. If you want greater durability and don’t need the power of the A12 chip, then you can still buy new iPhone 7 models. Take the $hundreds in cash you will save and buy 3rd party dongles adapters and cables that you will need, all because the idiots in Cupertino today don’t own great analog stereo systems like Jobs did.
If they are taking about quarter-over-quarter production, it’s non-news clickbait. Of course Q1 smartphone production drops after the Christmas (and iPhone launch) quarter.
What are the year-over-year numbers? That’s the only data point that provides insight.