Is the iPhone X a failure? Here’s what you need to know

The reports of the iPhone X death are greatly exaggerated, but like a lot of rumors, there’s a reason people are suddenly talking about Apple canceling what many consider to be its best phone in years. 

What’s the real story behind the so-called iPhone X cancellation? Reporting from a wide swath of publications cite that disappointing sales have led to a slowdown in production, which has led to an overreaction of what that could mean for the phone.

About a week ago, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities shared his latest findings of what’s what on Apple’s year ahead. Most notably, he shared that the current iPhone X model is slated to end its stint on the production line by Summer 2018, which if true, would be the shortest shelf life for any of Apple’s smartphones thus far.

This is the part of the story where, understandably, the red flag goes up for many. On paper, it seems troubling that a phone with such tremendous buzz would fizzle out rather unceremoniously less than 10 months after its debut. But, contrary to the tone of some earlier reporting on the topic, it’s not the end of the iPhone X – it’s just the start. 

X is just the beginning

Murmurs about Apple products spread like fire, proved once again by the response to Kuo’s research first published by AppleInsider. 

But as is the case with any and all rumors, including analyst predictions, anything that’s not fact should best be taken with a grain of salt – or else you might end up wrong at best, or at worst, creating a whole lot of confusion.

Kuo’s findings highlight that while the first iPhone X might not be part of the company’s current product lineup for long, the story doesn’t end there. Its design and hardware will carry forward in a total of three new iPhone X2 (it could also be called the iPhone XI) smartphones for 2018. 

Measuring success for context

The scale in which the success of Apple’s product are measured is different than that of other companies. By that, we mean that if it were a fledgling smartphone company selling hundreds of thousands of a particular smartphone, it might spell good times. But Apple forecasts its product to move in the millions.

What counts as a ‘win’ for a company as big as Apple is massively different to its rivals, and that’s important context for consumers to note when reading analysts’ predictions.' For a product with as much hype as the iPhone X, Apple and analysts can reasonably predict how many phones it will sell, which informs how many it needs to make in order to meet demand.

Hearing that a product is set to leave the production line will never not sound like failure, or like a premature dashing of an idea mid-execution. And because of that, any sizeable company is an easy target to jump on, let alone Apple.

Given these claims, it's unlikely that we're anywhere near the end of the iPhone X story. We're eagerly awaiting the launch of the iPhone XI in September to find out how Apple's phone strategy evolves.

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