IC suppliers concerned about new iPhone orders
here's a story traders are blaming Apple's weakness on.
IC suppliers concerned about new iPhone orders
Despite the record first-week sales for the newest iPhones, suppliers of related ICs have been concerned about the possibility of Apple downward adjusting its chip orders for the smartphones for the fourth quarter of 2015, according to industry sources.
Apple has announced that it sold more than 13 million new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus smartphones in just three days after launch, hitting a record.
However, a major analog IC supplier has disclosed that Apple has slightly lowered its demand for supplies for the new iPhones for December, said the sources.
Overall shipments of the iPhone 6s series are expected to reach 75-80 million units in third-quartet 2015, but the estimated volume for fourth-quarter 2015 has been reduced to 65-70 million, the sources cited the IC supplier as saying.
Apple's upstream suppliers stepped up IC shipments to the downstream manufacturers of the new Apple smartphones in July. As Apple showed much confidence in the devices, the manufacturing partners' IC stocks for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus were kept at high levels for 75 million phones per quarter, with the manufacturers believing that such order visibility would continue through the end of 2015, the sources added.
But it is still too early to conclude whether the new iPhones will see strong or poor sales in the coming months, because from the perspective of the upstream IC suppliers, they will have to wait for at least one to two more months before knowing whether there will be significant cuts in their IC orders, the sources said.
