An iPhone upgrade issue has led to an Apple shares fall. As reported in News.biz earlier, Apple shares fell by over 3% Friday. Several other tech companies also fell, including Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. This was mainly due to the share prices of these firms being overinflated, and the balloon had to burst some time. However, the Apple shares fall was slightly more complicated than just nervous investors selling them off before they took a dive.
There had been reports regarding the download speed of the new iPhone upgrade. The iPhone is due to be upgraded later this year. Reports had indicated the download speed of the new spec was slower than that of some rival smartphones. In this modern era of instant communications, nobody wants anything slower in their new toy. Even if they don’t use a particular feature, it has to be among the fastest – if not the fastest.
The 10th anniversary upgrade of the iPhone has been impatiently awaited, and this bad news for Apple users is sure to affect sales. Not just sales of the iPhone! It is possible for any negative factors in one Apple product to tend to affect sales of other Apple products.
In this case, it is the iOS major competitor Android that will likely benefit from the iPhone upgrade issue. Alphabet’s Android smartphones are believed to run faster than the iPhone upgrade. If true, this is sure to harm Apple sales. Apple sources its modems from Intel and from Qualcomm. Apple uses both these modem manufacturers because of its policy of not relying on a single supplier. This is at the root of the iPhone upgrade issue.
A Bloomberg report stated that Intel does not have the technical capability of Qualcomm Inc. So this policy gives Apple a problem! If the products of one supplier outperform those of the other, then there will be a quality issue. For that reason, Apple is restricting the speed of the faster modem to match that of the slower. This ensures that all the new iPhones will perform exactly the same.
In other words, Apple has given the perception of working to the lowest denominator rather than to the highest. Perhaps because of this iPhone quality issue, shares dropped by 3.5% to $149.60. The new iPhone upgrade had resulting in Apple shares rocketing by 29% during 2017 – until this issue became apparent.
The crash in share prices of the other tech companies may have been prompted by nervousness regarding their high prices. However, Apple shares may have suffered the additional complication of this iPhone upgrade issue. Quality is king in the smartphone stakes! Being better than the opposition is even more important!
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