Reports that iPhone 6s production may be slower than expected may be plain wrong, if you go by the record earnings one iPhone supplier recorded last month.
Catcher Technologies supplies the metal casings for the iPhone 6s. In November it recorded sales on $254 million — representing an increase of 1.4 percent from the previous month, and a massive 50.3 percent increase from this time last year.
While not all of Catcher’s money comes from Apple, the iPhone orders account for enough that analysts are confident the continued success of Apple’s handsets is responsible for the supplier’s sustained success.
At an investors’ conference last month, Catcher chairman Allen Horng said the company would see “very visible” sales growth in the fourth quarter of this year.
Despite every analyst trying to trip over one another to predict the exact money when the iPhone empire begins to crumble, it seems that Apple naysayers may have to wait at least one more year to start work on their obituary pieces.
Source: Taipeitimes
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
4 responses to “Reports of slowing iPhone production may be greatly exaggerated”
Didn’t we have proof over the years that trying to follow the supply chain for Apple is not a good indication of how they are fairing………. If I would tally up the ‘slowdowns’ that Apple has seen over the last 7 years you would think that the company is in serious trouble.
Where does that $200+ Billion (yeah…with a B) comes from then?
We see these reports every year, yet strangely ever year the market react as if this year’s report has the ‘real scoop’. Tim Cook has even taken the time during quarterly earnings call to let investors understand why they should be ignored. One great reason, is you can’t compare year over year build rates. If last year, they have trouble building up enough inventory early due to the new phone design and it’s inherent complications, and this year they have the process worked out with the larger phones, this means this year they would have built up a huge supply of units early in the process, and later in the rollout phase they wouldn’t need to sustain the ‘overdrive production’ at the same time in the calendar. At that point it looks like a slowdown, but it needs to be understood in the context of how many units were built earlier in the production ramp.
The strange thing is that Apple stock seems to lose either way. Last year on reports of ‘troubled production’ early the process, and this year on a slowdown in production as a year over year compare simply because the same early slowdown didn’t happen this year. Sentiment and attitude is hard to explain, when you see Microsoft trading at 38x TTM, Googabet at 36x, and Amazon at nearly 1000x, how do you really explain Apple at 13x? Simply put, everything about Apple is seen in a negative light, while the other companies are seen in a optimistic positive light. However, when you boil down to real facts, you see that sentiment is impossible to explain.
Analysts know they can get away with lying and disregarding anything Tim Cook says about Apple guidance. You know darn well they aren’t going to pull that sort of crap with Jeff Bezos and Amazon despite Bezos deliberately hiding numbers of specific hardware sales. They could easily do supply checks on Amazon but they don’t. These analysts believe Tim Cook is a poof and a sap so they can get away with anything they want. It works all the time because as soon as they publish their twice-monthly reports Apple stock goes into a tailspin.
Apple also has quite a cowardly bunch of so-called shareholders who have no faith in the company so they dump their stock at any unfounded negative rumor. These so-called analysts make a crooked living at forecasting Apple product sales for multiple quarters in advance, while other companies are completely ignored until they miss hugely and tank on earnings. No one is actually asking for these Apple sales predictions but these analysts feel it is their duty to do so to keep Apple honest. After all, based on their reasoning, for every good quarter Apple finishes, it is only a prelude to a disastrous following quarter. So let’s skip over this current holiday quarter which means little because the analysts are already focusing on the following quarter when Apple enters into doom mode.