iPhone 16 demand is so weak that employees can already buy it on discount | Hacker News Reader

iPhone 16 demand is so weak that employees can already buy it on discount

qz.com

86 pointselorant96 comments

I wish that this was seen as a good thing, not a bad thing. Everyone who wants an iPhone already has one, Apple makes good products that last, and new phones these days are incremental updates rather than revolutionary new products, so there’s not a large incentive to upgrade.

I agree! People also criticize Apple harshly for not massively redesigning the iPhone every year. That's a positive in my view.

Then they shouldn't release one every year.

Why not? They can release a slightly improved version every year. I know that some people feel obliged to stay on the "latest version" and buy a new iphone every year, but it's their decision.

It would reduce this compulsive behaviour, reduce the waste of boxes and transport, reduce industrial complexity and costs.

Their ability to manage the "industrial complexity" is an incredible competitive advantage, and means than in consumer comparisons among flagship models, theirs is rarely behind. This would not be the case if they had every other year releases, that would leave the off years open to attack by, say, Samsung, "Why buy last year's phone when you can get a current model?"

It doesn't mean consumers are or have to update every year, it's about having something up to date when the consumer goes phone shopping.

As for reducing compulsive behavior, nobody's forcing anyone to update. If one looks beneath the glass, Apple generally updates on a "tick tock" (more obvious when every other model was called "S").

Look back at the S years, and you see those generally tried out the new camera systems and other non-phone internals, while the integer models were the phone capability updates. Folks more interested in the camera or processing tended to upgrade on S years, folks wanting "new" designs or looking for mobile (radio) updates tended to upgrade on integer years. Apple still does this, though a less clear tick tock, and are now cascading these features.

Think of it as a kind of "canary" release channel, with the "Pro" features being constrained production till it ramps, and those same features can go in the next cycle's base model (as made clear across the 14, 15, and 16 models' feature cascade.

Once they have this cascade flowing, it allows a much longer subcomponent life cycle (as the subcomponents can be used across multiple generations without having to do a repackage. That's fantastic for reducing waste reduction, industrial complexity, defraying costs across many model years, all the things you say you want.

Automobiles do a similar thing with their "platforms" that change slowly and are used across models or even across badges, even as "model years" refresh each year. It's far more efficient for both pre-assembly and post sale supply chains.

Other brands are releasing yearly new devices because they like to copy Apple

Every year we get some level of improvement to the phone. Year-to-year it might be relatively minor but it’s /always/ an improvement (less power usage, more cpu power, more GPU power, more ml power, etc). These, sometimes, small improvements add up so that if you upgrade every 2-4 years they can cumulatively add up to a big improvement.

People complain about Apple comparing the new iPhone (or MBP) to a 2-3 year ago model saying it’s just so they can say it’s 50%/100%/etc faster but for the vast majority of people that /is/ the model they are upgrading from. While us nerds might want to gauge the year-to-year gain the average consumer benefits more from it being compared to what they have (a 2-4 year old device).

This method also lets people upgrade whenever they want (“on ramps” every year) vs having to wait X years for the next release or having to replace a broken phone with a N-2 year version because new phones only come out ever few years.

I know this is not going to happen for obvious marketing reasons but they should just drop the number, call it iPhone and stop making these pointless presentations. Then just drop a press release when they tweak something worth knowing about. Everything is so incremental that doing entirely presentations feels rather dumb.

Why?

We don’t force software to not ship non-major versions. Why does hardware have to be that way?

Shareholders’ expectations I suspect.

Think of the poor shareholders.

Plus US has this strange thing where shareholders can sue the CEO if they think not enough is being done.

I bought a note 8 6 years ago and honestly, I don't see why I would ever need anything better than that. We've reached peak phone a long time ago.

Mostly to keep up with website/app bloat, and better cameras if you like taking photos or videos. Other improvements like better screens or battery life are nice too, but only really noticeable if you're jumping a few phone generations at a time.

Also, paying 1000+$ for a… phone is insane when you think about it.

Not a phone, a mobile computer with a lot of connectivity, senors, compute power, etc.

iPhone? A very restricted mobile computer.

You can barely choose what software runs on it.

Kind of a shame that Windows Phone died.

Indeed. We need competition

Nevertheless, it is a lot of money to ask for something you will drop, break, lose, replace in a couple of years because its battery has failed. And you can’t even really do what you want with it.

Define “a couple of years”. I am using an iPhone 11 Pro and only just now am I upgrading to a 16 pro, mostly for the camera. The phone itself still works well, including the battery.

Most iPhone users keep their phones less than three years: https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/10/how-long-people-keep-iphones/

I’m also buying used iPhones and keeping them longer than that but we’re outliers.

And what happens to the old ones? I bet they are mostly resold, which is what I typically do.

That’s neither here nor there. I was saying it’s insane to me to pay several thousand dollars for a phone that’ll be replaced after 2–3 years (typically)

The iPhone, and really, most phones today, are pretty amazing pieces of technology in a glass slab. Expecting phenomenal changes between versions at this point might be asking for too much. Apple stuck itself in a corner with "stock" driven development.

Remake the form factor of the 4S and we’ll talk. That’s the last phone that was comfortable to hold.

The 13 Mini was also a nice size. Impossible to find nowadays.

Apparently 95% of users want big phones.

I guess we're part of the 5% ?

5% checking in

I get that some people spend their lives on their phones, but myself, with desktop, laptop and big hands, I don't want to carry half a tablet in my pocket to text people and play music. I adore my 12 Mini. I just wish it felt as thin as the 8

It seems most who are not using tech professionally don't particularly want or habituate all the multiple devices, and as such, the phone becomes their "tablet" experience. No desktop, no laptop, if there's an ipad it's in a different room, the bigger screen of the phone means they only reach for the one thing.

I also only text and play music. I get the largest phone available because I'm old and eyesight. Older people tend to have money.

> I just wish it felt as thin as the 8

It's very close:

  12 mini -> 8 -> SE gen 1 (or iPhone 5)

  Height:  131.5 mm -> 138.4 mm -> 123.8 mm
  Width:    64.2 mm ->  67.3 mm ->  58.6 mm
  Depth:     7.4 mm ->   7.3 mm ->   7.6 mm
  Weight: 135 grams -> 148 grams -> 113 grams

https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-12-mi...

True, but the 8 was rounded at the sides, so even if technically close in size, the square edges of the recent models make the phone feel bulkier.

What issue did you have with iPhone 5s and iPhone SE 2016? They were better than the 4S.

The SE is rounded and larger. The 4S’ size and shape made it very secure in my hand.

How was the form factor of 4S different than 4? I think the ridges on the sides were placed differently but that can’t honestly be something you care about?

The way I read it, it's just because the 4S came later, hence being the last phone of that form factor.

The 4s married both the design refresh and a generational internals upgrade, arguably Apple's first "perfect" (for its time) iPhone.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/iphone-faq/differe...

The 4 series was also plain beautiful

Apple listened. They made the 12 Mini and it sold poorly. But persevered and released the 13 Mini. Again, it sold poorly, so they gave up. Don’t blame Apple here, vast majority want gigantic phones.

I hear you and I agree on the surface but I really wish Apple better understood 2 things:

1. Not every device can be your best seller

2. Some product categories are important to fill even if sales are low (even very low)

Apple doesn’t release per-device breakdowns so it’s hard to have conversations on this topic but I’d bet money that the Mini (or another example: the Mac Pro) sold at levels that most companies would drool over.

But is a sale of a mini at the cost of a non-mini? Like if 3/4 of the mini buyer would have just gotten the next smallest form factor then you might not want the large time responsibility of another product.

I understand that, and obviously the line has to be drawn somewhere. I just think a company of Apple’s size/means is perfectly capable of maintaining and producing a mini for the people that want it. Then again, that’s easy for me to say I don’t run Apple.

Of course they're capable of doing it. Scarlet Johanson is also capable of dating me. They just don't want to.

They just didn't sell very well at all. I've seen estimates that the little phones represented just 5-6% of total iPhone sales while they were around. They're darling little devices, but they were simply not very popular.

Now, sure: You or I would probably love to have a product that "failed" by selling only as much as 5% of iPhone sales. We'd either be rolling in dough, or working our nuts off trying to figure out how to keep up production and sustain this beast, or both. "Only" five million units sold (or whatever), at ~$700 each? Fuck yeah!

But we're not Apple. Apple is already rolling in dough. They want product lines which work on a much bigger scale than that or it simply isn't worth their time -- those engineering and marketing expenses are more-profitably spent elsewhere, where they get 20x the return.

5-6% of sales ABSOLUTELY matters. The biggest question is really will the majority of these purchasers substitute the absent "Mini" model with another iPhone model? If 90% of those users will just buy a different model then there is little advantage to offering the mini, given the additional design/engineering costs of the smaller size.

Anecdotally, I'm a techie but a small phone die-hard. I help onto my original SE until they finally released a mini model and will likely do something similar with mini 13. They definitely lost some potential upgrade sales from me, but despite that Apple STILL has the best tiny phone offerings, they are still software and hardware supported by Apple, although you have to purchase refurbished. There just isn't a serious Android competitor, with any sort of long term commitment to small phones, that would justify the switching cost.

My opinion is that Apple botched their positioning with the mini. "Mini" is a diminutive term, it implies less than. It was the lowest pricing outside of their SE model. They released the 12 mini shortly after an SE release, leading to cannibalized sales. And they released it at the beginning of a period (ongoing) where Apple leaned into the messaging of "Bigger is Premium". The only people left to buy the mini were people obsessed with small phones.

I think a more successful product would have been to lean into their "Air" brand, leveraging Apple's known ability to engineer premium devices in the smallest, most-elegant packages; positioning it as a premium product orthogonal to their main iPhone line. And from the rumors, it sounds like this might be Apple's next move in a device market that is increasingly undifferentiated.

Air would have been a much better name. We will see if the rumored iPhone “Slim” (probably not what they would call it but it’s what I’ve seen some rumors call it) comes out in a smaller size as well.

Re: bigger is better

Yeah and it doesn’t help that they sometimes put features only on the Max phones (like the 5x zoom last year). I like the Max but I like it even better when the difference between the Pro and Pro Max is only size. I’m fairly certain that is due to other constraints (not product differentiation) but I hate it for the “normal”-size phone people when their options are “Go big or miss out on feature X”.

The iPhone 13 Mini has a 50% larger screen than the 4S. I have quite large hands, and it's still difficult to use it with one hand and it also isn't as well-balanced when holding it.

If Apple expected the Mini variants to be as successful as the others that's on them. It's clear that most people spend a lot of time on their phone consuming multimedia content and so for those a large screen makes sense. But there should be a choice and as an SE model it would still make sense imho.

Of course in the future small phones might become obsolete due to foldables, but as long as those are based on flimsy creased plastic and cost twice as much I'm not convinced.

uhhh… are you “holding it wrong”? how could the iphone 13 mini possibly be difficult to use with large hands? i have a 15 pro max, am not kareem abdul jabar, and have absolutely no problem with one-handed operation…

You can operate the 4S with one hand without shifting your grip. It still (barely) worked with the 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0gtsjfy7E (the diagonally opposite corner was already really stretching it)

It isn’t workable with larger screens (even the mini): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K3lTwGxMTk

This is true. But the Switch has spoiled me on larger screens for handheld games, and telescoping game controllers turn the phone into a Switch-like handheld for my (non-f2p) mobile game collection.

In the same way that Gap should stop making small and medium sized t-shirts because L sells better ... ?

They released the 13 mini because their product lead time exceeds one year. They didn’t have a Plus model to replace it with in time. It still sold more units than many Android models.

In addition, the mini is significantly larger than the 4S, so it doesn’t really address GP’s point.

Exactly this. As much as I like the smaller factors, you can't go against the markets.

My current is a 12 mini and I hoping to find a new old stock 13 mini for my replacement model.

This is my favorite model I've had since the 5! Guess I'm in the minority

I like the 13 mini. Shame they stopped it. Quite a lot of "opened but not used" ones on ebay.

SE's seem to have problems with many websites that blithely assume larger form factors. Not a blocker tho.

It's the other way around: websites have problems with small browser windows. And not just on phones, just yesterday an online shop's product images were invisible and glitchy unless the browser took up at least 2/3 of my 28" screen.

Why would I upgrade though — my $2K 13 Pro is still state of the art, and tech jobs are collapsing. Who knows whether I’ll need $2K in 3 months time?

Damn, are you me? My thoughts exactly. My 13PM is plenty good. And with all the layoffs that keep happening, imma save that money.

I think that we have now crossed some kind of threshold where processors and hardware in general are getting better at a rate faster than we can make our software more advanced (or bloated, whatever) to counter it.

Thus, hardware upgrades are now driven by software availability and not hardware going out of date quickly.

> Why would I upgrade though

Yeah, why would you? There have been how many Septembers since you got your current phone? Each one has had a new iPhone released. Next September there will be a new iPhone, and the September after that...

Get a new phone when you want a new phone. You don't need a new one just because there is a new one.

If they made a 16 mini I might buy one, but as it is my 13 mini still works fine and anything larger will be an inherent downgrade for me.

I would trade my left kidney for an iPhone 16 Pro mini.

Right one's faulty? ;-)

Why Pro etc for a Mini? I thought the point of Mini was not only to be a sanely sized phone but also a phone that is just a useful phone and not a phone with spec list that were more than overkill.

Right one is where I draw the line, take it or leave it.

Jokes aside, I just don't think the size of the device should be what decides the features that go into it. Sure, battery would be on the chopping block unless you make the device thicker, but I would have no problem with a thicker device, especially if it's otherwise the size of the 12/13 mini.

I'm confident it's possible to make a device the size of the 13 mini (slightly thicker to accommodate larger battery), with all the features of the 16 Pro, and I bet it would sell like hot cakes. I think many Pro purchasers buy Pro as a status symbol, but they don't actually want a large phone, that's my head canon for explaining why the 12/13 mini had poor sales figures, and I guess I know I'm probably wrong, but I want to be right, I'm tired of these huge phones that don't fit in my hand.

Same thing happened with the Vision Pro. They were available for employee purchase almost right away.

The fact that a Pro costs the same as previous generations Pro Max, and Pro Max is 25% over that, might also have something to do with it.

My wife still has iPhone X and as much as she's loving it, she wants some of the AI features for her hobbies and work. When we saw the price here in Eastern Europe we almost had a jaw drop moment. We're still buying it but... frak.

Apple is very openly abusing its monopoly at this point and no, don't tell me there are good competitors. Even the Galaxy S24 Ultra doesn't have as good a software.

Speaking of which, anybody can recommend a good gallery app that has Apple Photos' features?

Opinions vary obviously in this neverending "debate", but iOS is far from being good software unless you're neck deep in the ecosystem and don't know any better. Just because the UI is child-friendly doesn't make it useful. AOSP/LineageOS/GrapheneOS, especially with root, are excellent.

Also Immich is a great gallery app.

We are "neck deep in the ecosystem" by the mere virtue of actually using the said features. If that means "we don't know any better" then we're not going to find a productive common ground for discussion. We took what was offered. Again, do let me know if you believe there are actual alternatives. One example: Apple Photos' OCR worked better than many paid softwares I used 5-10 years ago.

And yeah I heard about Immich, thank you for the reminder. Guess I'll go scout what's out there and likely post a blog article here on HN at one point.

My plan is to only upgrade when a 13 mini alternative comes out - and only after it’s been out for 2 years so that I can buy it used for an acceptable price.

I understand there’s not as much demand for smaller smartphones, but then again, I would go on a limb and say there’s more demand than the demand Apple get’s to upgrade a device every year.

If they went on a 3 years alternating basis mini>standard>pro that would probably appeal to a very big lot of people.

This article is bunk and misinformation . Employees almost always get a single personal discount on launch day. I’ve managed to score many a launch day product from friends there.

What they don’t get on launch day is their lower tier discount for friends which (unless my friends are uncharacteristically holding out) they don’t have yet either.

Interestingly Reddit saw through the click bait, but HN didn't.

1. The analysts quote is false: EPP purchases have been available for launch day for several years. (And he should know that, but analysts are part of the principal/agent problem.)

2. Analyst's sales figures are based on hot air. Apple don't publish them and, while this same claim is falsely made every year, the main data gathering metric for tracking sales in the past (the nebulous "emails receipts") has been knocked out.

3. The comments about China are not just false, but long out of date. iPhone demand in China has already rebounded from an industry-wide 2 month slump in February and March.

4. Finally: a cursory review of shipping times across a range of Apple's own websites shows the same level of demand as usual: as the largest iPhone markets the USA and China continue to have the lion's share of stock, while most others have already slipped into 2-3 week delivery windows for October: UK, DE, FR, AE, AU, NZ sampled.

Anecdata: I’m upgrading to a 16 this year and was ready for preorder at 1pm on the 13th, but due to a transient banking issue my credit card was repeatedly declined for about 20 mins. When I finally got an order in, the shipping date was a few weeks later. You can’t take any exact measurements from this but I’d say they’re selling plenty of them still.

My two thoughts:

1. HN on average loves Apple doom and gloom stories. So I’m not surprised nobody questions the premise of the article.

2. Kuo (the analyst in question here) has had a very poor track record in the last couple years. His strength has always been supply chain and manufacturing numbers but I think he’s been struggling as Apple has diversified outside of China. Beyond that, his conjecture has always been full of head scratchers because he’s never been good at putting a story to the numbers.

How many people got screwed in the last 2 iPhone generations on carriers moving from a 24 month carrier financing model to 36 month carrier financing with "bill credit" promotions?

I fathom a lot of people have a sour taste about wanting to trade in and get stuck with this phone for the next 3 years.

If you don't "trade in" you can switch to Apple's CIT-backed financing that then Apple runs a single financing with an annual device refresh+trade-in tied to an annual financing refresh at the same monthly rate.

(If you trade in, starting this is not among their offers. Perhaps the deal term or finance amount is too low to make the economics work, or more likely, would confuse consumers at the one year mark when the payments needed to go up.)

> “One of the key factors for the lower-than-expected demand for the iPhone 16 Pro series is that the major selling point, Apple Intelligence, is not available at launch alongside the iPhone 16 release,” Kuo said.

Well, I might be the minority here, but I don't want a phone that promises to integrate AI and would be very careful that it can be completely removed before I get it. What I'm seeing from people around me, there's quite a few that don't want any AI integration in their devices.

I'm fine interacting with an LLM via browser or command line, a channel where it cannot know anything other than what I give it, but I'm not trusting a product that can be stealthily enshittified without me knowing it.

From the article: "In the first weekend since its debut, Apple sold about 37 million iPhone 16 smartphones".

Crazy that this is a "so weak demand"... and they are not yet available, just for pre-order.

What are the folks on here with logs and telemetry seeing compared to 14 & 15?

I don't how most of the Apple users miss (or do they?) but iOS has been on constant decline for some time. Bloody hell they screwed the Photos app to pathetic. Why would they even do that? Was someone bored?

They locked and coupled "call recording" feature with AI (and transcription as if older users would protested getting just the audio) and hence shrewdly limited to new devices. This was disgusting. The only feature I was really looking forward to.

Why the hell did they add that "colour tint" change for icons? Bloody hell!

And yet, even in iOS 18 you cannot change alert/ringtone settings for different SIM separately. I mean how retarded they at Apple have to be to not realise that two different numbers might actually demand that! Or maybe they will have to overhaul their entire codebase to do that. This seems plausible seeing their track record on Software.

Oh yes, iCloud and iCloud syncing across "various things" still sucks and is still opaque and you just hope it works and you have no idea of knowing what was history, if there was any conflict, did something even sync, where the hell are my tabs from the other device hours and days later, why the hell some tabs remain glued in iCloud Tabs which I removed from a device a fortnight or month ago. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Not to mention there is barely any advancement in the Phone and that too with raised price. No wonder people don't want a new iPhone.

I thought Google would step up - make privacy better et cetera. But no, these companies are in completely harmony and perfect duopoly knowing fully well that they should not try to eat each other's lunches.

We are way past beyond of critical mobile features, phones as platform are good enough, everything else are gimmicks to try to move beyond this.

Time to look elsewhere for profit growth.

Still like my iPhone X. It’s a great phone

There was a line at the not big city Apple Store I visited yesterday. I was in it.

Should’ve lowered rates sooner.

How does bogus clickbait trash like this make it to page 2…

Does qz have leaked internal business reports or something?

Have iPhone XS Max, am I missing anything?

If you are happy, then no.

My phone feels like a beater that's about to give up on me, and it's younger than yours. I envy long-lasting tech.

Serious question, serious answer: only camera low light and lens upgrades unless you're trying to run last year's AAA mobile games. Arguably no other differences are particularly noticeable -- other than the "always on" screen and mag-safe mounting + charging.

Something you're probably not missing: SIM slots. The new models, in the US, are missing SIM slots.

Still like my iPhone X

Perhaps Apple should take a hint that no one wants so-called AI features training on a device with intimate access to their lives.

Whatever the final reality of feature availability, the conceptual damage had been done: Apple was bandwagon leaping and we had no choice.

I will never buy another Apple device for other reasons, not least of which are the short support period and ever increasing enshittification of the operating system.

I have not been a fan of anything developed since roughly steve jobs passing. Touch bar?! No thanks.

The truth of the matter is that i see the light and insist upon a world where open source software, standards compliance, and end user choice MATTER, and matter more than corporate profits for an already too large and corrupt behemoth.

Apple is a company, not your friend

If anything the low numbers could be due to AI feature not being available at launch, not the other way around. I’ve not seen any coverage on “people not buying the iPhone due to AI features”.

> short support

Uh what? Apple set the bar for phone support, only recently did other manufactures catch up (or get closer).

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