Apple’s done quite well for itself with the iPhone. They’ve moved millions upon millions of the heralded handset, and they’re rolling in revenue-dough.
Now there’s a report, from the Chinese-language Economic Daily News, that Apple has reduced its Q2 iPhone orders from 2 million to 1.0-1.2 million – about half the expected amount of Q1 iPhone orders. The China-based tech-rag points to slow European iPhone sales as a reason for the reduction in handset orders, however they failed to provide further details.
With Steve Jobs’ recent announcement that Apple has sold 4 million iPhones since its launch, and is currently sustaining daily iPhone sales rates of 20,000 units, it seems unlikely that Apple is worried about their European sales figures. At the stated sales-rate, Apple is on track to move 1.8 million iPhones by March of this year, completely invalidating the Economic Daily News’ “report.”
The discrepancy could be attributed to Apple’s multi-supplier strategy. Apple routinely calls upon multiple suppliers to source their components, a strategy that aims to reduce Apple’s exposure to supply-chain and market volatility – Apple sources their touch-screen component from two different suppliers.
As such, any estimates based on a single supplier’s iPhone component-orders could lead to projected iPhone orders that are about half of actual iPhone shipments.
Or maybe the iPhone is really bombing in sales.