A new report has surfaced indicating that Apple has instructed its smartphone assemblers to halt the plans for additional production lines dedicated to the iPhone XR, which hit shelves in October.
This comes after Apple warned sometime last week that the sales for the crucial holiday quarter would likely miss Wall Street expectations.
The smartphone assemblers include: Foxconn and Pegatron, the two have been instructed to halt plans for additional production lines dedicated to the iPhone XR.
Wistron, which is a smaller iPhone assembler, has also been asked by Apple to stand by for rush orders, however, the company will receive no orders for the iPhone XR this season. Some of the reasons that have been cited include supply chain sources.
"For the Foxconn side, it first prepared nearly 60 assembly lines for Apple's XR model, but recently uses only around 45 production lines as its top customer said it does not need to manufacture that many by now," Nikkei quoted a source as saying. At its iPhone launch event in September, Apple introduced the lower-cost iPhone XR, made of aluminum, along with two other models, the XS and XS Max.
You might probably remember that about five years ago, Apple cut production orders for its plastic-backed iPhone 5C a month after its launch, the move fueled speculation of weak demand for the model.
A warning was also issued sometime last week by Cupertino, which is a California-based company, indicating that sales for the crucial holiday quarter were likely going to fall short of the Wall Street expectations.
On the same note, Apple has not responded immediately to the request for a comment. The assemblers too have not provided any response.
Apple's order to the two Taiwanese companies suggests that demand for cheapest of the 2018 iPhones hasn't lived up to Apple's expectations.
This implies that the company would make around 100,000 fewer XRs, the report noted, while a source within Pegatron said: "XR production is not reaching its maximum capacity now."
On the other hand, Apple has ordered around 5 million more iPhone 8 models and iPhone 8 Plus models, this brings the order for those to 25 million.
For the two 2017 iPhone 8 models, they both start at the price of $600 and $700 respectively, compared to $750 for the XR. The California based company revealed that it will no longer reveal details about the number of units it has managed to sell for the Macs, iPads, and iPhones.
