It’s interesting how quiet tech companies get about sales numbers when the going gets tough.
Apple’s iPhone 7, revealed at this week’s launch event, has already received a lukewarm reception by online audiences – fuelling perceptions that Apple has peaked and that their new device might flop.
These perceptions received further fuel today with the company’s refusal to comment on first weekend sale for the new handset.
Reports say the company decided to stop the practice because the number of phones sold during the period has become more a reflection of Apple’s own supply than consumer demand.
“As we have expanded our distribution through carriers and resellers to hundreds of thousands of locations around the world, we are now at a point where we know before taking the first customer pre-order that we will sell out of iPhone 7,” Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said.
“These initial sales will be governed by supply, not demand, and we have decided that it is no longer a representative metric for our investors and customers.”
It’s a sharp contrast to last September, when the company announced record breaking first weekend sales for the iPhone 6.
Interestingly, it echoes the explanation that Microsoft gave when their Xbox One lost ground month-on-month to Sony’s Playstation 4 back in 2015 and their assertion that they would no longer “be using console shipments as its primary metric for success.”
Time will tell whether Apple’s new approach to sales numbers falls along similar lines.
