The Macalope believes it was Shakespeare who wrote “Kill all the estimates of iPhone sales.”
He might have that off slightly but he’s pretty sure it was something like that.
This has long been a hot topic for the Macalope, probably peaking when the iPhone X was released. Boy, that was a wild avalanche of nonsense. Take your mind back to the heady days of early 2018, if you can. The Philadelphia Eagles were Super Bowl champions (can you imagine?), California legalized recreational use of marijuana (we got so high that weekend–you couldn’t feel your face, remember?), and Nikkei reported that Apple had cut iPhone X orders by not 10, not 20, not even 30 but a whopping 50 percent. This made complete sense as Apple is notoriously terrible at running its own business.
This wackadoodle idea was taken at face value and we were informed that almost nobody wanted the iPhone X via headlines that read “Almost nobody wants the iPhone X”. Clearly this was a big problem and pundits were only too ready to explain where Apple went wrong with the iPhone X under headlines that read “Here’s Where Apple Went Wrong With the iPhone X”. So helpful. And has Apple even said thank you?
IDG
Pundits were falling over themselves repeating this story and some even upped the ante, saying Apple hadn’t cut orders by 50 percent, don’t be ridiculous. No, it had cut iPhone X orders by 66 percent. This probably would have continued until they were suggesting Apple had cut iPhone X orders by infinity percent but this commentary ran through spring and pundits had to get on with telling us what a disappointment the iPhone XS was going to be.
As it turns out–ha, funny story–this was all wrong. The iPhone X topped sales charts and took 35 percent of the total handset industry profit. Oopsie doopsie. Oh, well.
The Macalope brings this up not just because it’s demonstrably easier to write a column that is basically a rehash of previous columns he’s written over the years. Partly because of that, though, because boy is it ever! It’s like doing a clips episode! But really because John Gruber noted the other day that it’s still going on. Not about the iPhone X, but now about the iPhone 16 line.
As Gruber points out, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted last fall that the iPhone 16 Pros would underperform and the big winner would be the iPhone 16 Plus. These were guesstimates (or “estiguesses”, depending on what part of the country you’re from) that were not born out by the facts.
…I think Kuo picks these numbers not at random, and not based on an honest attempt to even guess the actual sales, but rather to create headlines and inject his name into the news.
John Gruber, March 2, 2025
There is no doubt that this is a tactic many analysts take. The Macalope does not think that Trip Chowdhry actually believed Apple would “disappear” in 60 days if it didn’t release an “iWatch” in 2014. He was making a bombastic statement in order to get attention. Why anyone would want to get attention as a wrongness engine is a bit beyond the Macalope, but it’s clear that some people see that as a winning strategy.
Actually, looking around at things today, they’re probably right.
The Macalope has been talking about Apple sales estimates since October of 2006, when Merrill Lynch cut iPod estimates (remember iPods?) from 8.3 to 7.7 million, just days before the company announced the real number. That number?
Look, maybe we should just stop trying to estimate Apple unit sales until we can figure out what’s going on.
Which will probably be never.