Reports of bad iPhone 8 sales have been greatly exaggerated, analyst claims
Are Apple's iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus selling poorly? It depends how you look at it.
According to often-accurate Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, via MacRumors, iPhone 8 and 8 Plus sales are less than stellar simply because a lot of potential buyers are holding out for the iPhone X.
Kuo is essentially agreeing with other assessments that iPhone 8 and 8 Plus sales are weak compared to earlier models, but he thinks the market is "excessively negative" about the whole thing.
According to Kuo, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus sales have been roughly half of the sales of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, or even 6S and 6S Plus. But that's alright, because Apple is counting on half of its sales coming from the iPhone X -- and that device won't become available until Nov. 3.
Our initial survey of Apple Stores on launch day have shown that the buzz around the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus is nowhere near the usual level of excitement about a new iPhone. Kuo claims that the people who usually camp in front of Apple stores to get a new iPhone are "presumably hardcore Apple fans and heavy users," and those are the type of people who'd want to buy the exciting new iPhone X, not the iterative iPhone 8.
So is everything fine and dandy in Apple land? Not quite. There are mounting reports that the iPhone X will be in extremely short supply at launch, and even in the weeks and months after that. If Apple cannot make enough iPhone X to satisfy the typically high holiday demand, its sales will suffer.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
