Apple's iPhone 5c 'failure flop' outsold Blackberry, Windows Phone and every Android flagship in Q4

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  • Reply 101 of 299
    chipsychipsy Posts: 287member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cintos View Post





    ... And that supposition is that the 5c likely outsold the samsung S5 device in the US last fall. Do you have facts that supersede the 4 major carrier's fall results?



    Not to be the devils advocate, but one criticism of the data usage comes to mind. The usage of sales data from fall. That was the first three months after the release of the new iPhones. Generally sales are always higher in those months than in the following ones. By then the S4 was already 3 months old and the first sales 'wave' was already past. But DED has a point here, it certainly isn't such a flop as some sites depict it. Although I do think he overlooks one small thing. The idea of if you give people the choice between an 'old' iPhone 5 (like was the case the previous years) and an iPhone 5c for the same price which would actually be chosen most? Personally I like the old system better.

  • Reply 102 of 299
    cintoscintos Posts: 113member
    g4dualie wrote: »
    I am surprised by the number of anti-Apple people in this discussion.
    . Should be no surprise. All Apple-centric news sites are tracked by Samsung-paid bloggers. Why else would they come here and waste our time?
  • Reply 103 of 299
    I love DED articles
  • Reply 104 of 299
    bobschlobbobschlob Posts: 1,074member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Flaneur View Post

     
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by brlawyer View Post



    Is this enough or you need more?



    http://bgr.com/2014/03/13/iphone-5c-sales-china-market-share/



    http://bgr.com/2014/01/28/iphone-5c-sales-flop-q1-2014-earnings/



    http://www.cultofmac.com/270297/sorry-iphone-5c-youre-flop-china/



    Main reason apart from I have already mentioned? In previous times, Apple would lower the older model's price to 99 USD or so, or exactly what has NOT happened to the 5C, which carried a much higher price tag - and don't even come with the nonsensical excuse that Apple deliberately created another product line just to drive up sales of the 5S - no company is THAT stupid. 



    Just clear evidence that Cook should have stayed as COO, not CEO.




    Ooh, another pesky post! What are you talking about? The 5c is 99 USD. The articles you link to are the lies that DED is talking about, are they not?

    You didn't think he actually read the article, did you?

  • Reply 105 of 299

    My wife has a 5c she was supplied with by her employer for business. If they made a 64gb version I would have already bought one.

     

    These Fandroid loving Anal-Cysts need to cram it.

  • Reply 106 of 299
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member

    Amazing what perspective can do . . .

     

    Well done, DED. 

  • Reply 107 of 299
    froodfrood Posts: 771member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by herbapou View Post



    $550 is not mid tier, its still high end. Fact is Apple is doing very poorly in lots of countries because it lacks a mid-range phone.

     

    That is kind of the problem.  The 5c is a mid tier phone, but has a flagship phone price.  People paying a flagship price generally want a flagship phone which is why the high end buyers choosing Apple generally go for the 5s.  People saying 'Well I've never seen a 5c out and about' is kind of pointless, unless you're disputing Dilger's data, which I do not.  The 5c is selling very well, it's just quite a few less than Apple's valuation is based on.  People that say 'Analysts set expectations too high for Apple!' are really saying that 'Apple is overvalued!'   It's an equivalent statement since the value is based on the expectations.

     

    So while sales are super, they are not super enough to justify driving shares higher.  So what?  Both the 5s and the 5c are a success and are great phones.

     

    Apple can't really offer a mid-range (priced) phone with iOS 7.  The baseline specs just to run it are it quite high, and they are already probably straining things with the 8gb variant of the 5c.  To offer a substantially lower priced phone and still make any kind of profit margin on it, they would have to offer a more bare bones flavor of iOS- and they are boxed into not delivering that (even if they wanted to) lest they lose the 'fragmentation' high ground.

  • Reply 108 of 299
    brlawyerbrlawyer Posts: 828member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Cintos View Post





    Samsung's $14 billion ad budget at work.

     

    I must say it's always amusing to see comments like the above, particularly when I am one of the most rabid anti-Samsung and pro-Apple persons around here. My point is simply to note that:

     

    - Apple is disappointed with the 5C sales;

    - the 5C was a problem in search of a solution;

    - the company spent considerable money just to set up a different manufacturing line for a less-than-successful model;

    - no one cares about the 5C in most markets for the basic reason that its pricing is so close to that of the 5S;

    - realizing its mistake, Apple NOW reduces the price of the 5C to see who wants to buy it;

    - overall sales volumes have NOTHING to do with success as far as Apple is concerned - after all, the expectations were way higher than what numbers now show;

    - for those of you with a minimum of knowledge on Apple's history, go check the PowerBook blunder of the 90s, when Apple TOTALLY misread demand (i.e., undershooting its expectations) and then struggled to satisfy an already angry market. Cook has failed and now he is trying to fix the problem.

     

    Case closed - by the way, no need to resort to ad personam nonsense. I am not a criminal lawyer anyway (and would never be).

  • Reply 109 of 299
    slicksim wrote: »
    If you opted to study computing in the last 10 years, pretty much anywhere in the world, you would of ended up on Microsoft centric training course....this has produced hoards of anti Mack computer geeks that have ended up heading IT departments, IT publications and IT investment departments..... If this hypothesis is correct Apple will never able to get it right, it has a real PR problem. For many computer geeks Android, in the face of Microsoft miss hits, has become the new Windows. The 5c is seen as a kink in Apples armour, and as such a target for negativity.
    Some thoughts in MHO.

    For MOST of the last 10 years you would have called up your classmate on your iPhone to get the notes you needed for class. For HALF of those last 10 years you would have been exposed to the iPad; a product Microsoft didn't offer. Maybe you even carried one around campus because it was so portable and represented the latest in technology. Or perhaps you carried an Apple MBA for similar reasons.

    While Microsoft is a big name in networking and represents the installed infrastructure in business, it also represents the "old guard" and the "wired in place" thinking of the past. Microsoft is not going anywhere, and that both good news on one hand and bad news looking down the road at the emerged mobile trend in the unconnected office worker. Let's look at what the new IT worker faces today:

    1. BYOD is alive and thriving in business. The iPhone represents the bulk (north of 80% of all smart phones used in business). The iPad has even a higher penetration in business, education, and government installations.
    2. The iPad is the ONLY tablet approved by the GSA for government purchases, and has a multiyear lock-in.
    3. The GSA has approved three types of smart phones for government purchases. That includes Blackberry, all of Apple's iPhones and one model of Android made by Samsung which is specially modified. NO Microsoft phones or tablets were even considered and even may be considered until 2019.
    4. Apple is the overwhelming favorite of education K -12, and has a strong presence in higher education due to its strong mobile product line.
    4. The iPad is the standard tablet used by pilots in the military and commercial sectors with the exception of one airline.

    It would be safe to say that anyone trained for an IT position today will need to be as knowledgeable about Apple products as they will Microsoft, or find themselves locked out of a lot of employment opportunities.
  • Reply 110 of 299
    retiariusretiarius Posts: 142member
    Another analogy: Even though Einstein was verified correct for developing (even inventing) seminal contributions to special relativity, the photoelectric effect, general relativity, and quantum mechanics, he should be considered a "failure" for not having developed a unified field theory within his lifetime, and only winning one Nobel prize instead of two!
  • Reply 111 of 299
    Dan_DilgerDan_Dilger Posts: 1,583member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by brlawyer View Post

     

     

    I must say it's always amusing to see comments like the above, particularly when I am one of the most rabid anti-Samsung and pro-Apple persons around here. My point is simply to note that:

     

    - Apple is disappointed with the 5C sales;

     

    [this isn’t a statement of fact, it’s a speculative spin created to by bloggers to brand some aspect of the world’s most successful mobile company as being in trouble when it is not. Apple never voiced any "disappointment" in its sales mix. Why would it? It turned out to be more favorable than expected! The only way to can turn this reality upside down is to insist that there is something bad about things turning out better than planned. Which in this example is plainly horseshit. ]

     

    - the 5C was a problem in search of a solution;

     

    [what does that even mean? You’re creating language as a solution in search of a problem. We can only really only speculate why Apple created the 5c rather than continuing to sell the old 5, but it sure appears it was an attempt to make the older, cheaper backup model more broadly attractive. And it appears that the primary goal was to react to a market where it appeared that pricing pressure was more of a constraint that it appeared to be. As it turned out, 5s sold much better than expected, so the contingency plan of the 5c wasn’t as important as apparently first thought. That’s a pretty luxurious "problem" to have. Spinning it as failure is simply nonsensical.]

     

    - the company spent considerable money just to set up a different manufacturing line for a less-than-successful model;

     

    [yes it cost Apple something significant to develop a new model. That model outsold all the BB, Nokia/WP and Android models that Apple’s competitors developed in the same market. They were less successful. So what’s your thinking in describing Apple’s insurance premium some catastrophic mistake while giving a pass to all the phone makers and mobile platforms that obviously failed in a much greater way? 

     

    How much did Google spend building two Moto X/G models that didn’t sell at all? They lost money. With ~13 million sales in its launch quarter, the 5c is one of the most successful smartphones to have ever been designed. How many other models have ever sold in greater quantities (iPhone 5, iPhone 4, maybe 3GS? Other makers sell their phones at 1/10 the margins, if not at a loss). You talk like you think the 5c must have lost money, simply because you want to believe an outrageous lie created to deceive and smear. Why not just look at the facts? the 5c is a high margin, high volume phone. Perhaps the 5-6th best selling modern smartphone ever.

     

    Calling the 5c a flop is like calling Joe Montana a loser for not having won more Super Bowl titles. It is pure insanity.]

     

    - no one cares about the 5C in most markets for the basic reason that its pricing is so close to that of the 5S;

     

    [Again, you’re saying 13 million sales in a quarter were sold to "nobody?" Did "Nobody" buy Samsung’s Galaxy SIII and G S4? Repeating outrageous nonsense doesn’t factually support your position. Also, there are clearly millions of people for whom $100 is a significant consideration. Were that not the case, 2/3rds of Android buyers wouldn’t be picking up "free" junk phones still running Android 2.x when they could get a much nicer model for just ~$100 more.]

     

    - realizing its mistake, Apple NOW reduces the price of the 5C to see who wants to buy it;

     

    [So incentive pricing by Apple’s retail partners is something only done on the 5c? Have you ever paid any attention to how the majority of phones are sold? Also, the addition of a new, cheaper SKU with less storage (regardless of its utility or perceived value) is a "realization of mistake" only when Apple does it? What about when Google pays to develop two phones and neither one sells, and it liquidates the price and it still doesn’t move?]

     

    - overall sales volumes have NOTHING to do with success as far as Apple is concerned - after all, the expectations were way higher than what numbers now show;

     

    [This is just more nonsense. Pat yourself on the back for believing your own hot air. "Sales volumes have nothing to do with success?" What embarrassing garbage to dribble out, even hiding behind an anonymous handle. You’re trying to play the armchair quarterback, complaining about what you think an athlete should be able to score. Incredibly delusional.]

     

    - for those of you with a minimum of knowledge on Apple's history, go check the PowerBook blunder of the 90s, when Apple TOTALLY misread demand (i.e., undershooting its expectations) and then struggled to satisfy an already angry market. Cook has failed and now he is trying to fix the problem.

     

    [Except the reality was that Apple’s Powerbooks were profitable and popular, and the company failed to create enough of them while ending up with huge inventories of parts and poorly selling models like Performas, because it didn’t have very efficient operations back then.

     

    The 5c is not even comparable, because the 5c has deeply eaten into the higher end of Android sales, sells at high margin, and Apple’s current operations are extremely efficient. It reacts to inventory levels in real time. Apple didn’t give any hint of having significant excess inventory, and it reports its channel numbers to analysts. The entire situation is a contrived, speculative lie propagated by a RIM fan site. Why you continue to want to believe this is sort of amusing and darkly entertaining.]

     

    Case closed - by the way, no need to resort to ad personam nonsense. I am not a criminal lawyer anyway (and would never be).

     

    [If that’s how you argue your case, I can’t image anyone sane paying you to defend them]


  • Reply 112 of 299
    brlawyer wrote: »
    I must say it's always amusing to see comments like the above, particularly when I am one of the most rabid anti-Samsung and pro-Apple persons around here. My point is simply to note that:

    - Apple is disappointed with the 5C sales;
    - the 5C was a problem in search of a solution;
    - the company spent considerable money just to set up a different manufacturing line for a less-than-successful model;

    It's your opinion that Apple was "disappointed with the 5C sales." Management apparently did expect more sales, but they may have been perplexed by the reasons for missing their forecast. It may have been price, it may have been the colors they presented, or any one or a combination of factors. We don't know what or why.

    You say, "the 5C was a problem in search of a solution." I disagree. We know that the iPhone 5 was a real trick to assemble. To move the iPhone 5 to a less expensive slot may have required a change in how it was built. The 5c change in packaging may have been the result of that effort.

    Finally, when a company is retools to make a new product, the decision to do so is based on the quantity expected to be sold. The 5c may be sold for another year as it moves down another tier. In addition, next year's mid-range product may resemble the 5c and fill two brackets;we don't know. but Apple will get plenty of utility out of the design. It's not a failed product today, and it won't be a failed product next year either.
  • Reply 113 of 299
    Way to go apple. I read all these articles on here and on other sites and they all say that the 5c was a flop. Can't be too much of a flop if it's outsold all other phone from different companies. In my honest opinion what I woulda have done with the 5c, is dump the 16gb model and replace the 4s 8gb model in favor of an 8gb 5c at a starting price on contract at $99 then $199 for the 32gb. When the IP6 comes out, obviously the A8, and maybe a slight bump in screen size to 4.5', but nothing bigger than that as I love typing 1 handed as I'm doing right now in this thread. Don't be like samesung and just make larger phones just because you want to in attempts to draw apple customers away from apple. Apple is always been about innovation, so I want to see more innovation in the next phone and iPad. If you want something with a bigger screen size get an iPad mini. Do people realize how ridiculous they look with a phone the size of a iPad mini up to their ear. Apple like Steve said with introduction of the original Iphone and the iPad, stay away from the stylus pen. Just my opinion. Hope I don't ruffle anyone's feathers.
  • Reply 114 of 299
    Dan_DilgerDan_Dilger Posts: 1,583member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Frood View Post

     

    The 5c is selling very well, it's just quite a few less than Apple's valuation is based on.  People that say 'Analysts set expectations too high for Apple!' are really saying that 'Apple is overvalued!'   It's an equivalent statement since the value is based on the expectations.


     

    It’s not a binary situation. It’s not only that many analysts have set unrealistic expectations for some areas of Apple’s business (and we are talking about expectations that are too high by a very minimal percentage -- for Q1, there was a pro consensus expectation of 54.1M and indie expectation of 57M iPhones; Apple sold 51M. That’s a difference of roughly 10-15%, not some vast number like the Surface, where MSFT sold 1.4M across two quarters after analysts expected 2M in the first quarter. That’s an expectation too high by over 200%, and yet MSFT’s stock didn’t tank and immediately recovered.)

     

    Analysts were wrong not only in total sales projections, but also in the product mix. They expected Apple to sell fewer high end models and to end up with lower margins. They also failed to anticipate that Apple TV would bring in $1B of revenue, and have grossly failed to anticipate or even understand Apple’s software business in iTunes. They also don’t really understand Apple’s overall business. 

     

    So analysts weren't just wrong in "setting expectations too high," but were overall wrong about all sorts of things. Their valuations aren’t just too high, they are completely wrong. So Apple’s correct valuation isn’t "overvalued" but instead valued incorrectly to the point where what they are saying is nearly worthless to investors. Many investors don’t know that yet.

     

    Look at 2008, when Steve Jobs was throwing up his hands as analysts -- and investors -- changed their minds back and forth about whether Apple was worth $70B, $140B, or $85B, up and down throughout that year. Now they can’t agree whether Apple is worth $400B or $950B. They offer a range of opinions, and quite obviously most of them have to be wrong out of necessity. 

     

    If you step out of the vacuum and begin comparing Apple to its competition rather than to some fantasy of imagined potential, it’s pretty clearly undervalued by an incredible multiple. Which is why Apple is sucking the capital out of everyone else in the mobile industry.

  • Reply 115 of 299
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    mstone wrote: »
    I have never seen a 5c in the wild. I checked them out at the Apple store and I kind of remember the color schemes. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell because a lot of people have cases so unless you know someone who has one or see it up close there could be some out there that are not immediately recognizable. Apple never said how many were sold so anyone who says there are lots or says there are few, has no facts to support their claim.

    Cooks said the 5C outsold what the 4S did in the year ago qtr. if Cook's lying, prove it and have the SEC investigate.
  • Reply 116 of 299
    danielswdanielsw Posts: 906member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by softeky View Post



    Thank you, once again, for a well researched, thoughtful, and well presented article.



    From my perspective the 5c was Apple's response to the popular clamour for an iPhone that could compete with low-end smart phones. Successful execution of a low-end smartphone deployment would severly weaken Apple as a company. Consider the resource drain of producing enough low-cost, low-feature phones to make a difference to Apple's net revenue. Sure, Apple would rake in gross revenue but at such low margins that Wall Street would throw a fit and properly declare Apple to be on the road of diminishing returns.



    Apple is not out there to produce massive volumes of cheap crap to flood the market. That is Google's job. Google relies on Ad revenue from a massive platform base. Apple is a hardware vendor and relies on convincing customers to buy high margin goods. To do this successfully, Apple's platform must provide some justification to support this high margin. It does this by providing (at little or no extra cost) an effective ecosystem of applications and centrally supported resources.



    Cheap Apple phones that properly tie in to that ecosystem are an oxymoron. The minimum resource requirement is too high to access the ecosystem resources and would require dipping into Apples margin (its major source of revenue) to accomplish. The result would be less than optimal user experiences for no relevant gain to Apple (the gained customers would not value the ecosystem, having not been properly exposed to it and would not be candidates to upgrade to the fully supported systems).



    In other words a successful rollout of a truly cheap iPhone would be detrimental to Apple. Instead Apple executed (in the iPhone 5c) a replacement to the iPhone 4 & 5 that would not really fit a market niche until the iPhone 6 came out.



    The analyst slamming of the 5c is FUD-spreading at its worst. Consider that every 5c that is sold maintains Apple's margin and business model and half of those sold are taken from Android sales. The only negative side to this rollout is the currently-unsold inventory which Cook is a master at managing and will shortly be accommodated.

    Yours is an uncommonly perspicacious analysis. My compliments.

  • Reply 117 of 299
    dreyfus2dreyfus2 Posts: 1,072member
    The article is certainly right in that the "failure" claim is nonsense, nothing to argue.

    Still, it does not really account for the fact that, due to the subsidy situation, the 5c seems to be far less relevant in markets with no real subsidies outside the US. I commute between Germany and India and I see tons of 5s and have not seen a single 5c ever. Yes, this is anecdotal, but no best seller page of any local telco lists the 5c at all. (It is hard to really draw conclusions from that though, as most of them treat each color and capacity as a unique device.) My telco has even eliminated all but the white and blue models from their catalog.

    Not saying it is a failure, but a US only debuttal is only half the story.
  • Reply 118 of 299
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jungmark View Post

     
    Cooks said the 5C outsold what the 4S did in the year ago qtr. 


    Really? I didn't know that. From what I read I thought the 4S was still outselling the 5c when you count the worldwide numbers.

  • Reply 119 of 299
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by brlawyer View Post

     

    Notwithstanding AI's great efforts above, the fact is: the 5C is a FLOP, aka the IIvx/IIvi of the iPhone world.

     

    Even Apple itself admitted that sales were not "in line" (euphemism for "sorry, we haven't sold that many") - besides, they were absolutely sure that it would sell well in emerging markets and lower strata of industrialized markets; but they did not realize that the 5S was just marginally more expensive, particularly when such phones are sold in instalments or with more expensive plans.

     

    In other words, Cook completely misinterpreted demand trends just like what Apple did with the PowerBook when it didn't produce enough units of the specific notebook model really wanted by the public.

     

    I have never seen anyone with a 5C - and I can assure you that the 5C will go down in history as one of Apple's major market failures ever; it will be quietly discontinued in the coming months (or, more appropriately, "superseded" by revamped non-5C models). 


     

    It outsold almost every other phone on the market therefore they are less than flops.

     

    Android must be a complete failure, when will it be "quietly discontinued".

     

    Then there is the elephant in the room.

     

    iTunes makes more revenue and profit than all the Android handset makers added together apart from Samsung.

     

    Apple is doing quite well, thank you very much.

  • Reply 120 of 299

    Consider the scatological use of the first four letters of the title Analyst, and there you have it.

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