“Apple’s iPhone SE hasn’t sold in the vast numbers that a new iPhone release typically does. Did anyone really expect it to?” Mark Hibben writes for Seeking Alpha. “Some have called iPhone SE sales weak. Yet it’s selling well enough to be back ordered in the Apple online store with a shipment delay of a week to 10 days in the U.S. The SE will probably outsell the iPhone 5s it replaces as Apple’s lowest cost iPhone.”
“At least that’s the take of RBC Capital Markets analyst Amit Daryanani, who predicts sales of 40 million units in 2016. I think that’s a pretty easy prediction to make,” Hibben writes. “As Apple made clear at the March Special Event, it sold over 30 million 4-inch screen iPhones in 2015. The SE offers much more value by virtue of the processor, camera and NFC/Apple Pay system from the latest generation iPhone 6s. So it should outsell its predecessor.”
“But it was never going to sell 10 million in a weekend, and for this to become the yardstick to measure of success of the phone is kind of silly,” Hibben writes. “Nevertheless, the ‘weak’ initial sales of the SE are being offered as more evidence of Apple’s imminent decline by SA Contributor Michael Blair.”
MacDailyNews Take: That’s only because Blair is a brain-dead hit-whore who cherry-picks and massages data to constantly predict the ever-imminent demise of the world’s most valuable company. Blair makes John Dvorak look like an Apple genius.
“The significance of the SE is that Apple is deliberately becoming more price competitive. As such, it represents something of an experiment. I doubt that anyone knows for sure what the demand elasticity for iPhone is. We’re about to find out,” Hibben writes. “I believe this is a long-term positive for the stock. Apple has the manufacturing and distribution scale to compete on price. The fact that Apple is even testing the waters with the SE should scare its competition.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As a high quality device with excellent specs all around, the iPhone SE is a vastly more interesting experiment for Apple than was iPhone 5c.
We once had a Prime Minister in the UK called Blair. He was a useless piece of s**t as well.
Still referred to as Bliar around here. What an absolute **** that man is.
Sounds like this guys complaints about Apple could be referred to as the “Blair Bitch Project;”
Did not Apple announce that the iPhone SE sold 3.5 million in China alone on pre-sales? That does not sound like a flop to me. . . ergo more “Blair Bitch Project.”
What would Jehovah do
It’s so laughable 😆 at this point, reading this predictable, drooling drivel:
…The ‘weak’ initial sales of the SE are being offered as more evidence of Apple’s imminent decline by SA Contributor Michael Blair.”
How imaginative. Another FAILure of analysis. We should put the faces of these characters on dart boards.
You call him a hit-whore, but it must’ve worked because he got you to comment on his article.
No, we commented on MDN’s article. Blair doesn’t get the hit. This is what I like about reading idiot analyst stories on MDN.
Mine arrived today. It is rather quick.
The 5s styling is also ace. Wave it around in public and nobody thieves it 🙂
Mind you, on that last bit there’s probably going to be a lot of 5s owners getting their phones nicked now.
I just activated my SE last night from a 5c.
Forget this guys headlines…the SE is Wonderful!!
I am eating a sausage biscuit and coffee as we type using
Apple Pay…really easy and quick and I still get a hard copy receipt…now if Walmart will finally get on board.
I also love the Health app with the always on coprocessor as it tracked 3200 steps on the treadmill this morning to relieve my guilt for the sausage biscuit. I know to many this is old news, but for me, moving from a 3 yr old 5c to the SE is a three generation upgrade and I am thrilled with it. It is also lighter than the 5c, but not as smooth or as easy to drop. The author of this article is brain dead.
The Apple Store I went to yesterday was sold out of ALL unlocked SEs and only had a couple TMobile, and Sprint phones left… And only in the 16GB model. So I’m guessing sales are terrible.
I’ll probably get mine in August, maybe July. Got some other bills to pay first.
You can always buy a Scamsung 7. They’re already on sale with BOGO offers. So much for Samsung’s profitability.
Are the Scamscum 7s what they refer to as ‘burner phones’? 😉
That’s a horrible thought that Blair is lower than whale crap.
Why does MDN bother linking to Seeking Alpha articles?
Most companies would love to have a flop like Apple, especially LG. Apple listened to customers and produced something they wanted, Tim Cook must be fired. They compete in the middle tier, Apple is domed. Their competition doesn’t have: 64bit; secure enclave (the thing the FBI says they can’t hack); finger print scanner that works; eco-friendly parts, so we can’t write about those things. The new phone lacks their latest feature, something no one else has, so we must highlight this as a failure.
To be fair, Cook doesn’t have a particularly good track record ramping up supply when releasing products. I can’t think of any iPhone that had enough stock to meet the pent-up demand. Obviously the SE is going to be a sales success. It would have been a better success if Apple hadn’t waited so long to release it and, when it did finally get released, was produced in adequate numbers to meet the predictable tidal wave of buyers.
Note also that the 16 GB models are the least desirable. Apple could have made people much happier and streamlined its manufacturing by simply dropping that model and making what the people want: more memory. Oh, and Apple could have charged much more for a new 128GB model and made even more money. I really think Apple’s product planners are getting way too conservative and stingy.
Perhaps the 16GB models are now being bought primarily for enterprise use rather than personal use to keep large purchase prices down for businesses.
I agree with your comment on 16GB/32GB. I also agree that an updated 4″ model should have been released sooner.
But your first paragraph is ridiculous. To ramp up to an iPhone release with sufficient product to avoid temporary shortages either means that Apple would have to delay the release for months, or achieve crazy early production levels relative to its long term needs. It is not simple to produce tens of millions of high tech phones.
“The fact that Apple is even testing the waters with the SE should scare its competition.”
Actually, the fact that Apple exists and continues to release great products just maintains the aura of fear that radically ramped up with the release of the iPhone.