Demand for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus appear to have slowed down and shipments of iPhone devices from production lines in the fourth quarter of 2015 are likely to be 5-10% lower than originally expected.

The lowered factory shipments are in line with what we have been saying all along – even Apple will find it difficult to peddle expensive smartphones next year.

Most market research firms have lowered overall iPhone device shipment estimates for the fourth quarter of 2015 to 72-75 million units, compared to 76-78 million units predicted earlier, indicated the sources.

This is not bad, but given that Apple share prices have been running based on investors believing in the reality distortion field that the company is going to make even more money in the future having people are waking up from Jobs’ Dream is going to be a bad thing.

iPhone shipments for the first quarter of 2016 have also been lowered to 52-56 million units from the previous estimate of 58-60 million units. The revised figures also represent a decline of 12-15% as compared to a year earlier.

Makers in the iPhone supply chain have reduced overtime shifts since November and could move the Lunar New Year holidays ahead of schedule.
Foxconn Electronics' iPhone manufacturing plant in Zhengzhou, China has been indicated as one of the plants which are likely to shift their Lunar New Year holiday schedule. Foxconn insists that its Zhengzhou plant operations will remain normal.
Apple already inflated its figures by issuing the iPhone earlier in China this year to make it look like sales were the same, or slightly up on last year. However that means that the next quarterly figures will look very low, particularly if sales drop ten per cent. Normally Apple might hope that a new phone release might pull its nadgers out of the fire, but since the iPhone 7 is not going to be around until much later in the year and is unlikely to have much in the way of new tech, that could be a false hope.