> Despite months of breathless hype, the iPhone X hasn’t sold as well as expected since its debut last year. Apple sold 77.3 million iPhones in the final quarter of 2017, below analysts’ projections of 80.2 million units. Some consumers were turned off by the iPhone X’s $1,000 price despite liking the design even as they wanted something more cutting-edge than the cheaper iPhone 8. With its next lineup, Apple is seeking to rekindle sales by offering a model for everyone.
This seems like color commentary that isn't supported by their sources, or data. I'm not sure how they are supporting this statement. Apple's recent quarterly earnings [0] showed iPhone sales as (essentially) stable, year over year. ASP increased to $800 dollars (!) which would point to the iPhone X doing relatively well, despite not being available for the entire quarter.
Even beyond that, there is no way for Apple to begin product development at a point after they saw the Q4 results. There is far to much lead-time required for them to be able to wait until now to do so.
My guess is that 1) the rumors of these 2 new models are true, 2) Apple committed to this product roadmap a long time ago, and 3) Bloomberg is adding it's own spin to make the leaks more salacious.
>This seems like color commentary that isn't supported by their sources, or data.
It's BS reasoning, they compare BS "estimations" and say that Apple fell short, because the estimations said 80 million and Apple sold 77.3 million.
In the meantime, everybody and their dog were also predicting it wont sell at all, too expensive, the notch is this or that, etc -- and it topped almost everywhere.
What does that even mean? It's basically the same size as every other smartphone on the market and barely larger than a pack of gum. How much more portable can it get?
it means he/she prefers a smaller size. Is it inconceivable that someone could think all smartphones on the market are too big? This is hardly as ridiculous as you imply
Warm-season clothing, a t-shirt and jeans. It means the phone has to fit comfortably in front/back pocket. If it doesn't, it could be labeled as nonportable.
Who are this people who keep their phones in their back pockets?
(And I never had an issue with the iPhone 7 plus not fitting on my front pocket with room to spare -- even less so one would presume with the much smaller X).
> ASP increased to $800 dollars (!) which would point to the iPhone X doing relatively well, despite not being available for the entire quarter.
I'm not sure that is necessarily true. The iPhone 8 pricing ranges from $699 to $849, the 8 Plus from $799 to $949 and the X from $999 to $1149. A higher ASP doesn't necessarily indicate that the X has performed well, as it's possible the higher priced 8s have contributed to the overall increase.
- iPhone X - $1000-1150
- iPhone 8 - $650-850
- iPhone 8 Plus -$800 -950
Yielded an ASP of $796
That is a year-over-year increase of 14.5%, with the only real change being the iPhone X. I agree that some movement of the ASP could be attributed to Apple only offering 2 storage sizes for the iPhone 8s, but really, the price ranges are very similar if the iPhone X is excluded. It could easily be argued that, because Apple also offered their cheapest iPhone ever in 2018, there would be more pressure for ASP to be decreasing [0].
Even if the X isn't selling, the fact that a $1000+ iPhone is available will make it seem more reasonable to purchase one that costs $800+ instead of just the base model. Regardless of whether or not X sales have met expectations, I think the X is probably the biggest factor in the ASP increase aside from bumping the cost of the base model from $649 to $699.
Agreed. Similar reason why Starbucks has a Venti size and no longer lists their Short size on the menu – so that it makes it more reasonable (from a consumer standpoint) to purchase the medium-range option (Grande), thus pushing up the average price point.
Not saying that iPhones are priced the same way as lattes, but that's a known pricing consideration.
>A higher ASP doesn't necessarily indicate that the X has performed well, as it's possible the higher priced 8s have contributed to the overall increase.
"And so it was a stellar quarter for iPhone. The iPhone X was the most popular and that’s particularly noteworthy given that we didn’t start shipping until early November, and we’re constrained for a while. The team did a great job of getting into supply demand balance there in December. But since the launch of iPhone X, it has been the most popular iPhone every week, every week sales. And that is even through today, actually through January."
There is a decent amount of evidence that Apple's sales from the iPhone X (specifically) are less than expected, including 2-for-1 deals and Samsung cutting production of OLEDs. At the same time the margins on the X are better than ever.
I agree it's unnecessary commentary, but based in fact without too much speculation.
I haven't seen any iPhone X 2-for-1 deals, in the US at least. Samsung's OLED production glut can't be pinned solely on Apple [0]. Most of the "Apple slashes iPhone X production forecast" rumors seem to be... unreliable at best [1] [2].
Yeah, we hear this every 1Q's. Apple's sales peak during the release quarter and steadily declines over the next three quarters, until the new one comes out next year. I think this natural decline has been misinterpreted by reporters who really don't know any better and misreported as "declining demand."
> Samsung Display, Samsung's panel-making division, is reducing OLED panel production at its South Chungcheong plant, according to the Nikkei Asian Review, thanks to lower than expected iPhone X sales.
> The report states Samsung now plans to cover 20 million or fewer iPhone X devices for the quarter ending in March, a large decrease from the expected 45 to 50 million units.
> Who is pulling numbers out of thin air, statista.com or Samsung?
These numbers don't necessarily contradict each other. Since the X is the first OLED iPhone, and the X wasn't realeased until November, those "50 million OLED displays in 2017" were only for enough production to cover 2 months of sales. Projecting 180-200mm units in 2018 isn't unreasonable, based on that initial demand.
It looks like from the parents CNET article that they may have trimmed that outlook since then, potentially based on a stronger tapering of demand than they expected. But the original number isn't quite in the realm of thin air and lived comfortably in the land of the mildly optimistic (if improbable).
Two months with pent-up demand (Apple announced the iPhone X on September 12, and ‘everybody’ knew a new phone was going to be announced at least two weeks before) in the quarter were Apple typically sells a third of its yearly number of phones.
If you assume the other three quarter each do 22% of sales, that 50 million already goes down to 34 million. Anything more, for me, would be a big surprise.
But chances are this is more to blame on reporters hunting for attention than on Samsung. Samsung may just have said they would sell fewer displays than the 50 million of last quarter.
Nikkei doesn't even support their own headline. Samsung Display saw YoY decreases in OLED purchases by themselves, increased competition from Chinese and Taiwanese display suppliers, and essentially zero adoption of OLED by Chinese phone manufacturers[0] (also linked above). All those factors get fewer headlines than Apple doom and gloom, though.
First, I wouldn't take anything out of patentlyapple.com seriously. Second, what Chinese and Taiwanese display suppliers are you talking about? There is no "other" OLED manufacturer who pumps out displays in Samsung's quality or quantity.
> Other smartphone makers, who Samsung had hoped would incorporate OLED panels, have been slow to make the transition due to their expense and are sticking to liquid crystal displays. To make matters worse, Chinese OLED panel makers are expanding production capacity, heating up the price competition even more.
>Display Supply Chain Consultants of the U.S. estimates the utilization rate at Samsung's OLED panel factories is around 50-60% due to sluggish demand from smartphone makers... [OLED] Supply capacity is expected to grow worldwide. LG Display of South Korea is set to launch a new production line as early as this year, and China's BOE Technology Group and Tianma Microelectronics have launched new factories with the assistance of government subsidies. Overall production capacity is expected to double by 2020...The bar in global competition will likely rise further for Sharp and Japan Display, which are preparing to start mass-producing OLED panels in 2018 or 2019.
The PatentlyApple article just points out that Nikkei attached Apple to the headline for clicks, when the real OLED supply issue has little to do with them, and more to do with Samsungs own poor forecasting.
You can't confirm the reporting because it's ridiculous. Apple will likely only sell about 50-52M iPhones in q2 in total, so it'd take a very ignorant reporter to claim anyone expected nearly all of those to be iPhone Xs.
I always wondered if the price of the iPhone X wasn't set as high as it is as a way to segment the market and limit demand on that device, and perhaps they just miscalculated. Everybody was nervous about iPhone X part yields and overall supply ahead of the launch, after all.
From all the tear downs I've seen, there's obviously plenty of profit in that phone to charge a lower price. But if the iPhone X was $150 cheaper, a lot of iPhone 8 buyers would have waited for an X, and the headlines would all be about iPhone X shortages, the iPhone 8 would be the phone not selling, and Apple would end up moving less units than they are now.
So if that's the theory, perhaps Apple knew they were pricing the iPhone X a little higher than they should, but they had to do it that way to keep enough people buying their other phones for yields and production to catch up?
BOGO deals always come out of the carrier's pocket. The iPhone is the best customer acquisition tool so it all works out for the carrier in the end. Apple is certainly not going to cut prices to enable that.
Are the 2-for-1 deals directly from Apple? As far as I know this is from retailers who already purchased the stock in bulk from Apple. Even if there's less interest causing deals like those, they're already technically "sold" from my understanding.
> Are the 2-for-1 deals directly from Apple? As far as I know this is from retailers who already purchased the stock in bulk from Apple. Even if there's less interest causing deals like those, they're already technically "sold" from my understanding.
If you are Apple doing forward planning, retailers being unable to move your stock because retail sales were slower than expected had to figure into your planning as weak sales even if it doesn't show up in your current financials that way, because you can't expect that retailers are going to forget when ordering the next model: if you don't want them to cut orders, you have to give them a reason to think that the disappointing nresults won't be repeated.
There's a paywall here, but WSJ reported this about a month ago (weaker iPhone X demand). Still somewhat speculative though ... Tim Cook did say iPhone X was selling well.
Apple has cut orders for parts used in its iPhone X by 60 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the iPhone supply chain. Another person familiar with Apple's production goals said the gadget giant slashed its output targets to 20 million iPhone X units in the first three months of the year, down from about 40 million, according to the report.
This is the same line that the WSJ uses to troll for page clicks. They always claim to "cite people familiar with the project" or some other equally vague phrase.
I don't trust the WSJ at all for Apple stuff anymore.
It's hard to see the facts through the click bait this day and age. Journalists used to vet their sources, and I'm sure (hope) most still do, depending on the gravity of the subject matter.
This is a great example though.
Here we have multiple "reputable" news outlets reporting softer than expected demand for the iPhone X. And the comments mostly calling "BS".
Who to believe?
Apple news itself has a history of vague sources (Appleinsider, MacRumours etc.) .. almost impossible to filter in either direction.
In regards to journalism, I've always heard the word "salacious" to essentially mean "enticing." Used, for example, to describe the "salacious headlines" of tabloids. I was unaware of the sexual connotation of the term. Please excuse my misuse of it.
No, I think you're probably right. Enticing seems well enough aligned. My dictionary doesn't agree but I believe it's used at least colloquially in the way you used it...
> Despite months of breathless hype, the iPhone X hasn’t sold as well as expected since its debut last year. Apple sold 77.3 million iPhones in the final quarter of 2017, below analysts’ projections of 80.2 million units.
Considering the iPhone was going to be a flop by those same analysts, I’d say selling 77.3 million of them is pretty good.
Who actually writes this rubbish? They missed out on 3 million phones, based on a number you made up? It was out of stock for weeks and is only now really available.
It's kind of weird that gaining marketshare in a shrinking market while increasing revenue per sold phone would be a bad thing just because some analist thought it would even sell better.
It’s just a way to try to manipulate the stock price. They feed this blatantly false story every year, then buy on the dip and arbitrage when Tim Cook inevitably proves them wrong. It’s very transparent if you follow AAPL over a long time. WSJ and Nikkei are the chief offenders every year.
Apple has always had a strange relationship with analysts, but post Jobs they started to generate increasingly insane projections.
Part of the blame here is on Apple, they run an unusually secretive operation, where other companies would give a lot more in the way of guidance to help keep expectations more realistic.
They don't provide guidance on product mix, but they do provide guidance on expected revenue and margin. For Q1 2018 they projected between $84-$87 billion and came in at $88.3 billion.
Apple has been historically accurate in nailing their projections, yet when analysts calculate the expected product mix, they either forget the mix and assume Apple is going to sell $80 billion in only iPhones, or they include the mix, which must mean they expect Apple to sell $120 billion worth of stuff.
Where is Apple gaining market share? As near as I can tell by available data [0], their market share has been pretty flat for the past decade. Apple's revenue share may be increasing as low and mid tier Android devices continue to improve and proliferate, though.
One of the Apple news sites used to do this. Every once in a while (quarter, maybe?) it would publish a list of predictions from a handful of analysts and compare their predictions to reality.
I haven't seen it in a while, so I suspect it was MacNN (RIP).
"Apple has tried selling cheaper phones in the past with poor results." I love the iPhone SE. They can keep gradually improving that model and I'm good.
I'll take one iPhone X in an iPhone SE-sized body please. Preferably with the headphone jack.
The biggest turnoffs of the new iPhones are the increased sizes. I know people like the bigger phones, but I can't be the only one who prefers the smaller size. In my case, it's because I run/cycle with my phone (I'm not getting the Apple Watch so don't even suggest it) and the bulk of the 6/7/8/X series is way too much for me.
> In my case, it's because I run/cycle with my phone (I'm not getting the Apple Watch so don't even suggest it) and the bulk of the 6/7/8/X series is way too much for me.
...ok? I mean people would suggest it because it's the solution to your problem. It doesn't have to be the Apple Watch, but some sort of fitness band seems to be a much better solution than hoping against logic that phones will suddenly become tiny again.
Not sure why the downvote, but, for the sake of throwing a concrete response there:
Two bads don't make a good. If I don't want product X in the first place, then "just buy product X, and also spend a few hundred bucks extra on a 2nd product you otherwise don't want in order to try and duct tape over the things you don't like about product X" is a suggestion that comes across as tone deaf.
I see where you're coming from but it's definitely not that simple.
An extreme example would be "I carry my laptop with me because I need a clock, and I hate how bulky affordable laptops are because I carry it with me all the time."
Sure, I mean, your laptop functions as a clock. That doesn't make it anywhere close to the best device for the job. Is telling you to get a watch or a phone to tell time instead "duct taping over the things you don't like" about the laptop? No, it's suggesting that the real solution to your problem is to get the best device for the job.
Phones are similar. Do they work as fitness bands? Sure. But larger form factor phones bring tons of benefits, and their design shouldn't be constrained by the needs of those using them as fitness bands, just like the needs of laptop users shouldn't be constrained by those that use them as a clock.
I'm solution oriented, and waiting in vain for phones to suddenly become smaller again isn't a solution, it's basically just pouting.
> Would probably use a Zoolander phone if existed.
This effectively exists in the form of the Apple Watch Series 3 LTE, although it's smaller than Zoolander's phone (which had to be flipped open to use).
I've had it for a few weeks and can still hardly believe I can make and receive phone calls on the thing.
It was weird that in mentioning the “cheaper phones” that Apple has sold, they only mention the 5c, not the SE. The SE has sold surprisingly well, and it’s still available now. Why just dredge up the 5c and ignore the current model?
They’re probably referring to the 5c which clearly didn’t do well at all.
The SE is the cheap phone now but there are a lot of people (I’m guessing like you) who really like the form factor and don’t want a 6/7/8 sized phone let alone an X or a Plus.
I'm not pleased with the security aspect of face id though. I get that touch id is not highly secure either, but I'm more confident in it and it does not require looking at a phone to unlock.
Well that's a bummer. I'd like a phone that's going to be updated for at least 2 and hopefully 3 years. If it's already from the 6S generation I'm not too confident in it getting patched for the next 3 years.
Unlike Android manufacturers, Apple has a good track record of supporting older hardware. I have a 5S which was released nearly 5 years ago and is still receiving updates.
Right and that's my point. Apple is good at this, but Android manufactures aren't. Typically you are lucky to get 3 years of updates. Some new phones, like the Razer Phone, don't even come with the latest version of Android.
I really like the SE size, so I did a bit of searching to see what rumors are out there. Most seemed to suggest the update will be this fall and I don't really want to wait until then. One analyst claimed that wireless charging would be added to it and that seems plausible.
I'll probably get an iPhone 8 and it will be my first iPhone.
I'm in a similar boat. I'm unlikely to go for a bigger phone, and, seeing as the traffic lights in my city interfere with Bluetooh, I'm simply not going to go for a phone with no headphone jack.
But all signs indicate that it's just not happening. The thing that pretty well convinced me that the SE will be the last small iPhone is the new control center. Cramming so many things in there that key touch targets are too small to quickly hit with a thumb on an SE-sized screen seemed like a pretty clear, if tacit, statement of intent.
I have an iPhone 6/64GB and it has been running really slow. Last thing I tried is to disable all location services (besides for specific maps apps) and helped a little bit. Apple diagnosed that its battery still good. Question, how is your iPhone SE performance?
Switched to iPhone SE (after a few years on Android) 12 months ago. I have yet to encounter any situation where I've been annoyed with the phone's performance. Best, and snappiest, smart phone I've ever owned.
Annoyance has been reserved for individual apps, and the change of Control Centre in iOS 11.
Only thing I'm bothered by is the speed of the fingerprint scanner. It's the same scanner from the 5s, so 1st gen touch ID. Makes for a less than ideal wait time for what is a generally snappy phone.
Battery life is fantastic as well. I paired mine up with a thin silicone case and Qi receiver for wireless charging.
The iPhone SE I bought recently is really fast. Waited a while to update to the latest iOS version as it didn't look that good judging by the betas I was using on my iPad before it's official release. But it's running great after holding off for two months, zero problems.
GeekBench is like one or two dollar in the AppStore. If the score has a significant difference with other iPhone 6's probably you're having a battery problem.
Also factory resetting the phone can help. Try to figure out if there are any apps using a lot of battery in your battery overview. Some apps consume more in terms of background activity than others.
I had some issues with a relatively slow iPhone 6 recently - it didn't register as battery throttling. So I made an iTunes backup, factory reset the device, and restored from backup.
That got it back to about the speed I'd expect it to be. I still suspect that I'll take it in for a battery swap before the end of the year - but it might be worth trying if it's the slowness is a hindrance for you.
I'd still replace the battery regardless of what they tell you.
Apple once told me I had a good battery even though my phone would randomly shut off and attaching to a charger was the only solution to get the phone to turn on. Thankfully I had AppleCare and pushed for them to replace the phone.
I had to upgrade from an iPhone 6 that I liked just fine, because the OS keeps getting slower and slower. I suspect it relates back to the 3d shimmer effects and adding depth to everything, and transition animations. I suspect Ives needs to be knocked down a peg so that the phone stops getting worse. Apple is still selling the 6s so they test that one a bit more, and it it's completely dead, but it's still pretty laggy compared to how it was when it first shipped.
The iPhone 6 has an A8 where the iPhone SE has an A9. My iPhone 6 also says the battery is good and its a year old (2017-02-21) since I had to pay for the replacement since the old battery swelled and killed the touch screen ($159.62), but it is really slowing down in the last 2 months and getting hot after about 3 minutes of use.
I loved the performance and battery life of the phone, but I finally gave up on the form factor. Apple and developers now support the screen size as an afterthought and I'd become increasingly frustrated by new version of apps that squish their 5.5" UI into 4, so I finally had it and switched to a compact Android device. Apple could have avoided this by maintaining the size of the phone and reducing bezels, but it seems clear that they consider smaller phones a niche market that isn't interesting.
I replaced my iPhone 6 with an iPhone SE a few weeks ago. It was like having an old friend back, especially since I had an iPhone 4 for 4 years before the iPhone 6. It was nice to have a phone I can operate with one hand again, it felt very familiar, but at the same time it also worked better. Compared to the iPhone 6 it's is certainly faster, has a better battery life and also supports hey siri even when not plugged into the charger.
Back when Apple allowed downgrading, I would downgrade others phones to the original OEM version and the speed was quite good. Now a days I upgrade one revision and nothing more. The only apps I really need are Safari and mail which work fine.
Apple's price is $349 for the 32gb model and $449 for the 128gb model. The US cellular market might obfuscate the actual price of hardware through subsidies and bundling, but that's not the case in most international markets. The iPhone SE doesn't look like a particularly good deal compared to a similarly-priced handset from Xiaomi or Huawei - $349 is practically flagship territory these days.
Do you know what I really want from an iPhone? A more stable iOS. They've got a lot of bugs creeping in that seem like regressions. Little cracks appearing around the corners. Stuff that shouldn't really be bugs as they should have tests in place for this. I don't want fancy talking animated emoji. Or balloons flying around when I send an iMessage. I just want something solid.
One of the most annoying issues I have is with basic SMS from a non-iPhone user. The notification doesn't give me the sender's name, it just gives me their number, even though it's in my Contacts and I've just sent them an SMS. Not everyone I send messages to lives in an iMessage bubble or has WhatsApp or whatever. I've raised this as bug with Apple and they've flagged it as a duplicate. Many iOS updates later it somtimes it says [Maybe: <Person's Name>] as the notification. Why maybe? It never use to say that.
Hopefully lower-priced isn't just cheaper parts alone, but also the option for a smaller phone.
Edge-to-edge, I want a phone the size of a 6/7 screen. Smaller form factor without losing usable area is my dream iPhone, not something larger or even the X size.
I keep on thinking about ditching my iPhone for a Mini with cellular capability. I never make phone calls any more; mostly it gets used for Mastodon, IM, email, and running the Kindle app. Maybe I'll try that when the next upgrade happens. If it does; MacRumors says the main rumor is of it being discontinued soon...
I'm an Android user because I don't want to spend more than $250 on the device in my arsenal that takes the most abuse.
A good Apple product that competed with, for example, the Moto G4, could change the game. I'd love a mostly disposable iPhone that was as good as a mid-range Android.
Only reason I can think of is that it shows a bit of a misunderstanding of Apple's business model. They've never competed on price in the phone market and are unlikely to start any time soon.
I keep wondering when Apple will bite the bullet and make a phone for the emerging market. The smartphone market is getting more and more mature and if Apple want's to keep sales up I think segmentation will be key. I would not be surprised if there is a philosophical battle going on in Apple right now about whether or not to make a phone for India & Africa, but the market is there.
> I keep wondering when Apple will bite the bullet and make a phone for the emerging market.
If you consider China an emerging market, Apple is doing pretty good there (3rd or 4th largest market, they were number 4 in smartphone sales for Q42017). In fact, the iPhone X sells better there than anywhere else because of face factors for rich Chinese consumers. iPhones also sell well to India's middle class in spite of not being able to have a retail presence.
Emerging markets are hardly homogenous, they have plenty of consumers with money willing to buy something high end. By going low end, Apple could actually damage their cachet with those consumers.
The budget market is generally a race to the bottom, and I don't see Apple interested in such a market. I know the counter will be that Apple can combine quality with fairly low price, but I think that's quite a high risk proposition.
I think the one good reason to make a phone for the budget market is app developer mind share. While developers obviously cant avoid building for iOS, the more data you see of overall users/your users coming from Android, you implicitly start building for Android first and then your iOS app "catching up". If you are a resource constrained company in India, in China, I imagine you build for Android first and then iOS. This lost mindshare would be problematic in the long term.
Apple is squeezing as much as they can get out of their existing user base. Look at home pod, the watch, and apple music -- all great services that basically need an iPhone to work. I could see them adding more services to compliment the iPhone but I'm not sure how much more they can get from their existing users. Android dominates by market share and eventually I can see Apple trying to shorten the gap.. I guess it really depends on how many more services they can provide around the iPhone.
Apple has around 80% of the profits in the smart phone industry already. iPhone doesn't drive service monetization, rather services drive iPhone monetization, so unlike Google, Apple can't win with cheaper phones.
I do not want FaceID, and will resist it as long as possible. I do not want to normalize the idea that security should depend on a camera taking images of my face and environment. I am not alone in this, and believe this is one reason the iPhone X is selling poorly.
FaceID doesn't "take images of your face and environment" though. It uses a dot projection (the pattern is unique to each phone) to produce a 3D approximation of your face's structure, and collapses this into some sort of mathematical representation of your face. This information is stored in a separate chip on the phone which the OS does not have access to (and it never leaves your phone; Apple isn't using your face for processing in the cloud or anything). By their statistics, FaceID is an order of magnitude less likely to result in false positives than TouchID.
And aside from this, for people who are truly concerned about security, Apple recommends not using either FaceID or TouchID anyway (as both can be compelled by court order in the US).
> FaceID doesn't "take images of your face and environment" though.
From "How Apple's New FaceID Works" at Gizmodo:
"Face ID starts with an image of your face, but builds on top of it with the TrueDepth’s dot projector, which will invisibly project over 30,000 dots onto your face each time you look at your phone, creating and building on its map of your features.
"'We use the image and the dot pattern to push through neural networks to create a mathematical model of your face,' Apple’s Phil Schiller explained."
Your objection to my objection might be that FaceID doesn't store the images it takes, but uses them to construct a facial map that it stores instead.
But even if that were any better, that's not true, either.
From Apple's iOS Security Guide:
"Once it confirms the presence of an attentive face, the TrueDepth camera projects and reads over 30,000 infrared dots to form a depth map of the face, along with a 2D infrared image. This data is used to create a sequence of 2D images and depth maps, which are digitally signed and sent to the Secure Enclave."
The public nature of your face inherently makes access to your phone less secure than the private nature of your fingerprints or even a PIN. But it's not the security of the phone, or the photos or face map stored on it that trouble me.
It's the camera-based security paradigm I reject. It reduces resistance to a surveillance society, and increases the incentives for other businesses to use face-identifying software, which destroys privacy in the real world. I don't want people to get used to surrendering their privacy to access their data, and I won't buy a phone that sends a market signal telling the corporate world that I accept these kind of privacy-destroying technologies.
No. I'm saying that your face is more public than your fingerprint, and that makes your phone less secure. That's not my primary reason for being against FaceID, but it's an obvious truth that Apple has engaged in a lot of misdirection about.
Apple just lost time with iPhone X, they don't know what they're doing, they're loosing time tasting the market and giving away their path to competition. Clearly someone with more vision is making the difference here.
This seems like color commentary that isn't supported by their sources, or data. I'm not sure how they are supporting this statement. Apple's recent quarterly earnings [0] showed iPhone sales as (essentially) stable, year over year. ASP increased to $800 dollars (!) which would point to the iPhone X doing relatively well, despite not being available for the entire quarter.
Even beyond that, there is no way for Apple to begin product development at a point after they saw the Q4 results. There is far to much lead-time required for them to be able to wait until now to do so.
My guess is that 1) the rumors of these 2 new models are true, 2) Apple committed to this product roadmap a long time ago, and 3) Bloomberg is adding it's own spin to make the leaks more salacious.
[0] - https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/02/apple-reports-its-holiday...