Is the iPhone XR selling well, or is it selling poorly? That seems to be something that analysts can’t quite agree upon. Initial reports claimed that the iPhone XR pre-orders had outpaced the pre-orders of the iPhone 8, but later it was suggested that production boosts for the iPhone XR had been cancelled due to alleged low demand.
However there was another report that suggested that it was due to quality issues that resulted in the production boosts being cancelled. That being said, a new report from KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst John Vinh has indicated that the iPhone XR isn’t selling as well as Apple would like, and that Apple’s inventory of iPhone XR is “bloated”.
According to Vinh, “Our latest carrier survey indicates in-line iPhone XS/Max demand, while iPhone XR sell-through has been underwhelming. While iPhone XS Max inventories remain healthy, XR inventories have already bloated to over 3 DOI [days of inventory].” Unsurprisingly Apple declined to comment on the report, so we can’t be sure of how accurate it is.
That being said, Apple has recently decided that they will no longer officially announce their device sales, which means that we won’t know for certain how well (or how badly) the iPhone XR is doing. This isn’t the first time that Apple is sitting on unsold inventory. Several years ago Apple launched the iPhone 5c which was also positioned as a more affordable iPhone, but yet it failed to sell.