Apple has provided a statement to CNBC saying it will not be releasing first weekend sales numbers for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. The company says the numbers are “no longer a representative metric for our investors and customers.”
JUST IN: Apple says it will not be releasing iPhone pre-order numbers as it traditionally has in the past. pic.twitter.com/kGXfPcUkKB
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) September 8, 2016
It had been expected that demand would outweigh supply for the popular handsets during the early going, due to issues faced by Apple’s supply chain in ramping up for production of the new handsets. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo last week told investors that the issues were due to challenges faced in meeting Apple’s new IPX7 water resistance requirements.
“We expect iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be incredibly popular with customers and we are thrilled to begin taking pre-orders on September 9. Customers will receive their new iPhones starting September 16.
In years past, we’ve announced how many new iPhones had been sold as of the first weekend following launch. But as we have expanded our distribution through carriers and resellers to hundreds of thousands of locations around the world, we are now at a point where we know before taking the first customer pre-order that we will sell out of iPhone 7.
These initial sales will be governed by supply, not demand, and we have decided that it is no longer a representative metric for our investors and customers. Therefore we won’t be releasing a first-weekend number any longer. We are reiterating the financial guidance for the September quarter that we provided on July 26.”
The statement has, of course, led to concern among observers that perhaps Apple won’t be announcing first weekend sales numbers due to a lack of demand for the new handset, which is viewed by some as an “evolutionary, not revolutionary” device that merely bridges the gap between last year’s iPhone 6s Plus and next year’s expected to be radically redesigned 10th Anniversary “iPhone 8.”
AAPL is currently trading at $105.98, down 2.22% in today’s trading.
(Via MacRumors)
