The Apple iPhone X might be struggling

A recent report claims demand for Apple’s flagship smartphone ironically flagged in the first quarter of 2018.

Fast Company says it knows some people with inside knowledge of the Apple supply chain and they told it Apple is cutting its orders of the iPhone X from its manufacturers because it’s struggling to move the stock it already has. Apparently Apple has only ordered 8 million units for Q2 2018, which is way less than you would expect from a company that would expect to ship over 40 million units of all its phones in that quarter.

As you can see from our tracker table below, Apple always has its biggest quarter in Q4 as its choreographs the launch of its new iPhone with the holiday season. Apple shifted 77 million total smartphones in Q4 and, while it doesn’t break down its shipments by model, it’s generally assumed that a good chunk of those were Xs, and Canalys had an educated guess at 29 million – around a third.

The moment of truth will be upon us soon, as Apple will report its earnings – and iPhone shipments – tomorrow evening. If shipments are well below 51 million (17 million Xs) then that would imply this rumour has some legs and the X has been a disappointment, at least in terms of volume. On the other hand Apple still makes obscene profits, so perhaps volume was never the aim in the first place.

According to Bloomberg analysts are a bit concerned by these rumours and Apple’s shares have fallen a few percent in the last week, presumably as a result of all this. An additional rumour doing the rounds is that Apple will launch a version of the X with a cheaper screen to bring the cost down, having apparently hit a ceiling for what many are prepared to spend with the X.