Forget Bill Murray. It's Groundhog Day, starring the iPhone 5c.
The Wall Street Journal is out with an eerily familiar report that Apple (AAPL 1.45%) is cutting its iPhone 5c orders from suppliers in response to weaker-than-expected demand. That echoes a similar report from January of this year, when the WSJ had a similar report on iPhone 5 build plans that promptly knocked shares down by 4%. In that case, Apple did end up reporting iPhone unit sales that missed lofty expectations, but its figures were hardly poor in the grand scheme of things.
Tim Cook has explicitly warned investors against believing all the supply-chain rumors that get disseminated. Even if any individual data point -- a big if -- were accurate, Apple's supply chain is so large that it's impossible to use that information as a proxy to arrive at the bigger picture. For what it's worth, investors seem to have taken his advice to heart, as shares closed modestly higher today.
The WSJ report also suggests that iPhone 5s orders have been increased. While both aspects of this report should be questioned, investors should be happy if demand is indeed being focused primarily on the flagship iPhone 5s. That would suggest that Apple has some potential margin upside, if it can catch up to demand.
In this segment of Tech Teardown, Erin Kennedy discusses the WSJ report with Evan Niu, CFA.
