The year has not been good to Apple. In what may be one of their worst years in the 2010s, Apple products are not hot to trot. People are still not aboard the smart watch bandwagon, and likely never will be. The entire tablet market is floundering, with many big brands calling it quits entirely. The MacBook Pro was roundly thrashed by tech reviewers and consumers alike as overpriced and poorly designed. And last but not least, every single iPhone release this year has been a complete miss. From the iPhone XR to the iPhone XS and XS Max, overpriced and derivative was the general consensus, and it showed in the sales (or lack thereof). Apple hiking up the prices of their already unwanted smartphones by 28% probably didn’t help. The XS Max in particular can set you back nearly $1,500 yet is, at best, marginally better than the iPhones of yesteryear.
Apple suppliers are becoming increasingly frustrated with Apple as the company continues to fail to get back on top and regular buyers of their products are beginning to decrease their order sizes. Apple’s decision to now withhold unit sales from investors has caused investor confidence in the company to plummet, almost as much as Apple’s stock, which continues to dip at a steady pace.
Whether Apple has a game plan on how to get out of this slump is anyone’s guess, but at least they are making some wise decisions when it comes to their products. It has been revealed that Apple will be slashing the production orders on their three latest iPhone models. No one is buying the X series, which is why reports have indicated that Apple will be cutting the production orders by as much as 33%.
News of this caused Apple’s stock to take yet another dip, but in the long run, this was probably a good move on Apple’s part. For many, Apple is becoming the Madden of the smartphone industry; new releases every year that are hardly any different from their older products, and not worth the additional money. Consumers have had enough, and unless Apple shapes up, they might be in for a heap of trouble.
