You ever see one of those court dramas where the lawyer yells “Objection, your honor! Assumes facts not in evidence!” Well, don’t be surprised if you find yourself standing up and yelling that as you read this piece.
Writing for the Guardian Liberty Voice, Bernard O’Leary sums up the rumors which we should all just assume are true.
“Apple Ready to Cut Losses on Failed iPhone 5c” (tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody and please note that The Guardian Liberty Voice is not associated with Britain’s The Guardian).
The iPhone 5c was something of a surprise addition to Apple’s wildly successful line of smartphones when it was announced in September of last year.
Unless you count all those pictures of it that appeared before it was announced.
However, less than six months later it looks like Apple’s experiment has failed and the Cupertino giants are ready to cut their losses.
According to whom? Why, our old friends at DigiTimes and the Wall Street Journal, neither of which has ever been wrong about any-aaand BOOM, the Macalope’s be-antlered head just a-sploded.
Let’s forget the fact that no one has the slightest idea of how many iPhone 4 units Apple sold when the iPhone 4s was the top of the line or how many 4s’s it sold when the 5 was the top of the line. Let’s just assume the 5c is a loser because it didn’t sell as well as the 5s. And, just to be sure we’re ignoring everything that runs counter to the 5c-as-loser meme, let’s also forget that this would not be the first time Apple did away with plastic just for the sake of having a different design. And let’s also forget the possibility that Apple will just slide the 5c down the line and therefore doesn’t need as many units.
Let’s forget all of that and just assume this report is true.
And then proceed on to more wacky conclusions that fly in the face of reality.
Apple launched the 5c last year as a cut-price companion to their flagship iPhone 5s.
“Cut-price”? No. Apple does not sell “cut-price” devices. What it did was improve its margin at that price point by reducing component costs.
Reception was muted for the new phone, with reviewers criticizing the build quality that saw the metal casing of the 5s replaced by a plastic casing.
Wrong again. No one criticized the build quality. If you’ve held one, you know that the build quality of the 5c is excellent. Build quality and materials are two different things.
Questions were also raised about the pricing, with the 5c costing $100 less than the fully-featured 5s.
Only Apple could make a phone that is both “cut-price” and too expensive. And somehow be seen to fail at both.
Meanwhile, several budget Android phones arrived on the market with vastly reduced prices.
And Apple doesn’t compete with those phones. But the company still managed to sell more phones than ever.
While Apple generally tends to stay tight-lipped about the sales figures for individual iPhone models, analysts believe that iPhone 5c sales figures have been possibly as much as 30% lower than expected.
Those are cuts in analysts’ projections. Analysts who have absolutely no idea how many Apple expected to sell.
If the rumors turn out to be true, it would mark the first real failure for the wildly successful iPhone brand.
Other than all the other manufactured failures, like Antennagate and Glassgate and Mapsgate and …
And now, are you ready for the stunning conclusion to this gripping drama? The drama in which O’Leary admits high sales of the 5s make this pretty meaningless?
If the iPhone 5c has failed, Cook will no doubt be hoping that Apple doesn’t cut its losses by looking for a new CEO.
Apparently, and the Macalope is not exactly sure how this works, but it would seem that Tim Cook is responsible for the supposed poor sales of the 5c but not responsible for the high sales of the more expensive 5s.
That guy should renegotiate his contract, because that seems unfair.