iPhone 16 demand is so weak that employees can already buy it on discount

https://qz.com/apple-iphone-16-pre-orders-sales-intelligence-ai-1851651638

by elorant • 2 years ago

86 94 2 years ago

I wish that this was seen as a good thing, not a bad thing. Everyone who wants an iPhone already has one, Apple makes good products that last, and new phones these days are incremental updates rather than revolutionary new products, so there’s not a large incentive to upgrade.

RockRobotRock• 2 years ago

I agree! People also criticize Apple harshly for not massively redesigning the iPhone every year. That's a positive in my view.

gregoriol3• 2 years ago

Then they shouldn't release one every year.

maximus-decimus2• 2 years ago

I bought a note 8 6 years ago and honestly, I don't see why I would ever need anything better than that. We've reached peak phone a long time ago.

psb217• 2 years ago

Mostly to keep up with website/app bloat, and better cameras if you like taking photos or videos. Other improvements like better screens or battery life are nice too, but only really noticeable if you're jumping a few phone generations at a time.

ornornor5• 2 years ago

Also, paying 1000+$ for a… phone is insane when you think about it.

mostlysimilar• 2 years ago

Not a phone, a mobile computer with a lot of connectivity, senors, compute power, etc.

dkobia• 2 years ago

The iPhone, and really, most phones today, are pretty amazing pieces of technology in a glass slab. Expecting phenomenal changes between versions at this point might be asking for too much. Apple stuck itself in a corner with "stock" driven development.

aetherspawn2• 2 years ago

Why would I upgrade though — my $2K 13 Pro is still state of the art, and tech jobs are collapsing. Who knows whether I’ll need $2K in 3 months time?

zalyh• 2 years ago

Damn, are you me? My thoughts exactly. My 13PM is plenty good. And with all the layoffs that keep happening, imma save that money.

aetherspawn2• 2 years ago

I think that we have now crossed some kind of threshold where processors and hardware in general are getting better at a rate faster than we can make our software more advanced (or bloated, whatever) to counter it.

Thus, hardware upgrades are now driven by software availability and not hardware going out of date quickly.

Kon-Peki• 2 years ago

Why would I upgrade though

Yeah, why would you? There have been how many Septembers since you got your current phone? Each one has had a new iPhone released. Next September there will be a new iPhone, and the September after that...

Get a new phone when you want a new phone. You don't need a new one just because there is a new one.

kotaKat• 2 years ago

How many people got screwed in the last 2 iPhone generations on carriers moving from a 24 month carrier financing model to 36 month carrier financing with "bill credit" promotions?

I fathom a lot of people have a sour taste about wanting to trade in and get stuck with this phone for the next 3 years.

Terretta5• 2 years ago

If you don't "trade in" you can switch to Apple's CIT-backed financing that then Apple runs a single financing with an annual device refresh+trade-in tied to an annual financing refresh at the same monthly rate.

(If you trade in, starting this is not among their offers. Perhaps the deal term or finance amount is too low to make the economics work, or more likely, would confuse consumers at the one year mark when the payments needed to go up.)

jedberg• 2 years ago

Same thing happened with the Vision Pro. They were available for employee purchase almost right away.

dagmx2• 2 years ago

This article is bunk and misinformation . Employees almost always get a single personal discount on launch day. I’ve managed to score many a launch day product from friends there.

What they don’t get on launch day is their lower tier discount for friends which (unless my friends are uncharacteristically holding out) they don’t have yet either.

quitit• 2 years ago

Interestingly Reddit saw through the click bait, but HN didn't.

1. The analysts quote is false: EPP purchases have been available for launch day for several years. (And he should know that, but analysts are part of the principal/agent problem.)

2. Analyst's sales figures are based on hot air. Apple don't publish them and, while this same claim is falsely made every year, the main data gathering metric for tracking sales in the past (the nebulous "emails receipts") has been knocked out.

3. The comments about China are not just false, but long out of date. iPhone demand in China has already rebounded from an industry-wide 2 month slump in February and March.

4. Finally: a cursory review of shipping times across a range of Apple's own websites shows the same level of demand as usual: as the largest iPhone markets the USA and China continue to have the lion's share of stock, while most others have already slipped into 2-3 week delivery windows for October: UK, DE, FR, AE, AU, NZ sampled.

danw1979• 2 years ago

Anecdata: I’m upgrading to a 16 this year and was ready for preorder at 1pm on the 13th, but due to a transient banking issue my credit card was repeatedly declined for about 20 mins. When I finally got an order in, the shipping date was a few weeks later. You can’t take any exact measurements from this but I’d say they’re selling plenty of them still.

dagmx2• 2 years ago

My two thoughts:

1. HN on average loves Apple doom and gloom stories. So I’m not surprised nobody questions the premise of the article.

2. Kuo (the analyst in question here) has had a very poor track record in the last couple years. His strength has always been supply chain and manufacturing numbers but I think he’s been struggling as Apple has diversified outside of China. Beyond that, his conjecture has always been full of head scratchers because he’s never been good at putting a story to the numbers.

mensetmanusman• 2 years ago

Does qz have leaked internal business reports or something?

jcpham22• 2 years ago

Still like my iPhone X

jcpham22• 2 years ago

Still like my iPhone X. It’s a great phone

user39393822• 2 years ago

Remake the form factor of the 4S and we’ll talk. That’s the last phone that was comfortable to hold.

Tempest19812• 2 years ago

The 13 Mini was also a nice size. Impossible to find nowadays.

Apparently 95% of users want big phones.

worthless-trash• 2 years ago

I guess we're part of the 5% ?

sph2• 2 years ago

I get that some people spend their lives on their phones, but myself, with desktop, laptop and big hands, I don't want to carry half a tablet in my pocket to text people and play music. I adore my 12 Mini. I just wish it felt as thin as the 8

usui• 2 years ago

What issue did you have with iPhone 5s and iPhone SE 2016? They were better than the 4S.

user39393822• 2 years ago

The SE is rounded and larger. The 4S’ size and shape made it very secure in my hand.

wodenokoto• 2 years ago

How was the form factor of 4S different than 4? I think the ridges on the sides were placed differently but that can’t honestly be something you care about?

1d22a• 2 years ago

The way I read it, it's just because the 4S came later, hence being the last phone of that form factor.

Terretta5• 2 years ago

The 4s married both the design refresh and a generational internals upgrade, arguably Apple's first "perfect" (for its time) iPhone.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/iphone-faq/differe...

blackeyeblitzar• 2 years ago

The 4 series was also plain beautiful

fire_lake• 2 years ago

Apple listened. They made the 12 Mini and it sold poorly. But persevered and released the 13 Mini. Again, it sold poorly, so they gave up. Don’t blame Apple here, vast majority want gigantic phones.

joshstrange5• 2 years ago

I hear you and I agree on the surface but I really wish Apple better understood 2 things:

1. Not every device can be your best seller

2. Some product categories are important to fill even if sales are low (even very low)

Apple doesn’t release per-device breakdowns so it’s hard to have conversations on this topic but I’d bet money that the Mini (or another example: the Mac Pro) sold at levels that most companies would drool over.

alpaca1282• 2 years ago

The iPhone 13 Mini has a 50% larger screen than the 4S. I have quite large hands, and it's still difficult to use it with one hand and it also isn't as well-balanced when holding it.

If Apple expected the Mini variants to be as successful as the others that's on them. It's clear that most people spend a lot of time on their phone consuming multimedia content and so for those a large screen makes sense. But there should be a choice and as an SE model it would still make sense imho.

Of course in the future small phones might become obsolete due to foldables, but as long as those are based on flimsy creased plastic and cost twice as much I'm not convinced.

gomox• 2 years ago

In the same way that Gap should stop making small and medium sized t-shirts because L sells better ... ?

layer82• 2 years ago

They released the 13 mini because their product lead time exceeds one year. They didn’t have a Plus model to replace it with in time. It still sold more units than many Android models.

In addition, the mini is significantly larger than the 4S, so it doesn’t really address GP’s point.

xangel• 2 years ago

Exactly this. As much as I like the smaller factors, you can't go against the markets.

nyarlathotep_• 2 years ago

My current is a 12 mini and I hoping to find a new old stock 13 mini for my replacement model.

This is my favorite model I've had since the 5! Guess I'm in the minority

euroderf• 2 years ago

SE's seem to have problems with many websites that blithely assume larger form factors. Not a blocker tho.

alpaca1282• 2 years ago

It's the other way around: websites have problems with small browser windows. And not just on phones, just yesterday an online shop's product images were invisible and glitchy unless the browser took up at least 2/3 of my 28" screen.

moscoe• 2 years ago

How does bogus clickbait trash like this make it to page 2…

tiahura• 2 years ago

What are the folks on here with logs and telemetry seeing compared to 14 & 15?

anothername12• 2 years ago

Have iPhone XS Max, am I missing anything?

nicbou• 2 years ago

If you are happy, then no.

My phone feels like a beater that's about to give up on me, and it's younger than yours. I envy long-lasting tech.

Terretta5• 2 years ago

Serious question, serious answer: only camera low light and lens upgrades unless you're trying to run last year's AAA mobile games. Arguably no other differences are particularly noticeable -- other than the "always on" screen and mag-safe mounting + charging.

Something you're probably not missing: SIM slots. The new models, in the US, are missing SIM slots.

Ancalagon• 2 years ago

Should’ve lowered rates sooner.

binkethy• 2 years ago

Perhaps Apple should take a hint that no one wants so-called AI features training on a device with intimate access to their lives.

Whatever the final reality of feature availability, the conceptual damage had been done: Apple was bandwagon leaping and we had no choice.

I will never buy another Apple device for other reasons, not least of which are the short support period and ever increasing enshittification of the operating system.

I have not been a fan of anything developed since roughly steve jobs passing. Touch bar?! No thanks.

The truth of the matter is that i see the light and insist upon a world where open source software, standards compliance, and end user choice MATTER, and matter more than corporate profits for an already too large and corrupt behemoth.

Apple is a company, not your friend

joshstrange5• 2 years ago

If anything the low numbers could be due to AI feature not being available at launch, not the other way around. I’ve not seen any coverage on “people not buying the iPhone due to AI features”.

short support

Uh what? Apple set the bar for phone support, only recently did other manufactures catch up (or get closer).

pjmlp2• 2 years ago

We are way past beyond of critical mobile features, phones as platform are good enough, everything else are gimmicks to try to move beyond this.

Time to look elsewhere for profit growth.

zecg• 2 years ago

“One of the key factors for the lower-than-expected demand for the iPhone 16 Pro series is that the major selling point, Apple Intelligence, is not available at launch alongside the iPhone 16 release,” Kuo said.

Well, I might be the minority here, but I don't want a phone that promises to integrate AI and would be very careful that it can be completely removed before I get it. What I'm seeing from people around me, there's quite a few that don't want any AI integration in their devices.

I'm fine interacting with an LLM via browser or command line, a channel where it cannot know anything other than what I give it, but I'm not trusting a product that can be stealthily enshittified without me knowing it.

wtcactus• 2 years ago

My plan is to only upgrade when a 13 mini alternative comes out - and only after it’s been out for 2 years so that I can buy it used for an acceptable price.

I understand there’s not as much demand for smaller smartphones, but then again, I would go on a limb and say there’s more demand than the demand Apple get’s to upgrade a device every year.

If they went on a 3 years alternating basis mini>standard>pro that would probably appeal to a very big lot of people.

pdimitar2• 2 years ago

The fact that a Pro costs the same as previous generations Pro Max, and Pro Max is 25% over that, might also have something to do with it.

My wife still has iPhone X and as much as she's loving it, she wants some of the AI features for her hobbies and work. When we saw the price here in Eastern Europe we almost had a jaw drop moment. We're still buying it but... frak.

Apple is very openly abusing its monopoly at this point and no, don't tell me there are good competitors. Even the Galaxy S24 Ultra doesn't have as good a software.

Speaking of which, anybody can recommend a good gallery app that has Apple Photos' features?

k4rli• 2 years ago

Opinions vary obviously in this neverending "debate", but iOS is far from being good software unless you're neck deep in the ecosystem and don't know any better. Just because the UI is child-friendly doesn't make it useful. AOSP/LineageOS/GrapheneOS, especially with root, are excellent.

Also Immich is a great gallery app.

pdimitar2• 2 years ago

We are "neck deep in the ecosystem" by the mere virtue of actually using the said features. If that means "we don't know any better" then we're not going to find a productive common ground for discussion. We took what was offered. Again, do let me know if you believe there are actual alternatives. One example: Apple Photos' OCR worked better than many paid softwares I used 5-10 years ago.

And yeah I heard about Immich, thank you for the reminder. Guess I'll go scout what's out there and likely post a blog article here on HN at one point.

BugsJustFindMe• 2 years ago

If they made a 16 mini I might buy one, but as it is my 13 mini still works fine and anything larger will be an inherent downgrade for me.

rekoil2• 2 years ago

I would trade my left kidney for an iPhone 16 Pro mini.

crossroadsguy2• 2 years ago

Right one's faulty? ;-)

Why Pro etc for a Mini? I thought the point of Mini was not only to be a sanely sized phone but also a phone that is just a useful phone and not a phone with spec list that were more than overkill.

crossroadsguy2• 2 years ago

I don't how most of the Apple users miss (or do they?) but iOS has been on constant decline for some time. Bloody hell they screwed the Photos app to pathetic. Why would they even do that? Was someone bored?

They locked and coupled "call recording" feature with AI (and transcription as if older users would protested getting just the audio) and hence shrewdly limited to new devices. This was disgusting. The only feature I was really looking forward to.

Why the hell did they add that "colour tint" change for icons? Bloody hell!

And yet, even in iOS 18 you cannot change alert/ringtone settings for different SIM separately. I mean how retarded they at Apple have to be to not realise that two different numbers might actually demand that! Or maybe they will have to overhaul their entire codebase to do that. This seems plausible seeing their track record on Software.

Oh yes, iCloud and iCloud syncing across "various things" still sucks and is still opaque and you just hope it works and you have no idea of knowing what was history, if there was any conflict, did something even sync, where the hell are my tabs from the other device hours and days later, why the hell some tabs remain glued in iCloud Tabs which I removed from a device a fortnight or month ago. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Not to mention there is barely any advancement in the Phone and that too with raised price. No wonder people don't want a new iPhone.

I thought Google would step up - make privacy better et cetera. But no, these companies are in completely harmony and perfect duopoly knowing fully well that they should not try to eat each other's lunches.

twsted• 2 years ago

From the article: "In the first weekend since its debut, Apple sold about 37 million iPhone 16 smartphones".

Crazy that this is a "so weak demand"... and they are not yet available, just for pre-order.

kylehotchkiss• 2 years ago

There was a line at the not big city Apple Store I visited yesterday. I was in it.

iPhone 16 demand is so weak that employees can already buy it on discount

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