Apple Plans To Delay iPhone Production Ramp, Will Produce 20% Fewer Units

A little over a week ago, as global stocks were just beginning a rebound that would set the US market on track for its biggest one-month rally in almost nine years, we spotted a premarket Apple headline that seemed suspiciously crafted to bolster the Dow: According to Nikkei, which cited anonymous official sources at key Apple suppliers like Foxconn, the consumer-tech giant had boosted iPhone production 4% in March. A few days later, Apple unveiled its new iPhone SE, a new budget model priced at just $400.

Now, WSJ is adding even more fuel to Apple’s “green shoots” economic narrative. To wit, the paper reported on Monday that Apple is “forging ahead with plans to release four new iPhone models later this year, people familiar with its plans say. The phones, some with 5G connectivity, will vary in price and come in three sizes – 5.4 inches, two measuring 6.1 inches, and one at 6.7 inches, all featuring organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, screens, the people said.”

Right now, the company is planning to delay its traditional production ramp-up by about a month to account for supply chain disruptions caused by factory closures, and other factors. The positive news comes months after one influential Wedbush analyst decried a “doomsday drop” in shipments to China during the early days of the pandemic.

The notion that Apple will push ahead with its annual production ramp with only a month’s delay sounds like a big win for global manufacturing. But the details of the report are somewhat less sanguine.

The company believes its new 5G enabled phones will contribute to an even bigger ‘recycling’ this year, though it hasn’t yet released the specs for the new phones, an announcement that typically doesn’t happen until the company’s big pre-holiday product-launch event (and event that has for years been accommodating viewers with free live streams of the presentations). Last year, Apple failed to ship more than 200 million phones for the first time since 2015, giving the company another reason to expect an ‘energized’ sales cycle this year.

But the biggest question facing the company is whether buyers in the US and Europe will be feeling wealthy enough to splurge on an upgrade when they can simply keep their older models for a little while longer. Apple is reportedly slashing production by 20%, according to the report, but whether that will be enough of a cut remains to be seen.

Apple usually unveils new iPhone models in mid-September and begins selling them before the end of the month. To do so, it usually ramps up mass-production in the early summer, building up inventory around August.

This year, while Apple would still be building some of the new phones in the July-to-September period, the mass-production ramp-up will slide back by about a month, the people said.

Apple is slashing the number of handsets that it plans to make in the second half of this year by as much as 20%, one of the people said. It isn’t clear whether the slashed amount for 2020 would be pushed back into 2021 for manufacturing.

Along with several other American tech giants, Apple is expected to report earnings for the prior fiscal quarter this week. We imagine we’ll hear more about the tech behemoth’s production delays, and how they’ll impact the company’s earnings and revenue guidance for the upcoming “supercycle.”