Apple prunes back iPhone X production as sales figures wither

By Bill Roberson January 29, 2018

Hot phone, cool sales

It was the hottest holiday gift you could hope to get – or give: The Apple iPhone X. With its high-rez OLED display, augmented reality abilities and sleek design, it flew off the shelves at a $1,000 a pop or more, if you could even find one. Now, with the holiday buying binge behind us, it looks like Apple is going to cut production of the halo phone due to softer-than-expected demand in the U.S., Europe and China.

The Nikkei Asian Review is saying that Apple is likely cutting production levels in half going forward, and may be rethinking their OLED-based iPhone plans for the future. The OLED screen in the iPhone Ten is expensive, and comes from competitor Samsung, just two more reasons Tim Cook and company are rethinking how many future phones will get the super-screen.

BGR says that the only iPhone to get an OLED screen this year could be a larger iPhone X Plus-type of model with a 6.5-inch screen, the rest of the lineup will get good old LCD screens, which few people were complaining about anyway. Hit the link for more on the story and we should find out about Apple’s OLED future just about the time summer starts.

Unpatch that patch before you repatch

More news on the Meltdown and Spectre fiasco affecting Intel CPUs and other chips: Microsoft has issued an emergency patch that rolls back a patch issued by Intel after the Intel patch apparently caused some PCs to become unstable, reboot several times or even cause loss of data for some users. So do you need to install it? Microsoft is saying that if your PC is updated and running fine, DON’T use the emergency patch. But if you’re having issues, then use it.

If in doubt, you can download the patch, and toggle it on and off if need be. Confusing? You bet. We’ve got links to check to see if your PC is affected, along with links to the patch and even more explanations from Microsoft and Intel.

What could go wrong?

The Trump administration is thinking about building a 5G cellular network that’s owned and operated by the government, and rented out to carriers.

The reason, as stated by documents obtained by news agency Axios: To guard against involvement in a “normal” commercial 5G buildout that would involve technology from China, which the proposal described as the “dominant malicious actor in the Information Domain.” After the news broke, pushback from cell service providers was immediate, and even Trump-friendly FCC head Ajit Pai said it’s a bad idea.

But the idea does have its supporters, who have compared it to the national interstate highway system, a post-war government project that enabled travel and commerce on a massive scale. What do you think of the idea? Should the US Government build a “secure” 5G network, or should companies already investing in and developing 5G tech be left alone to build out the system like they did with the 3G and LTE networks? Leave us a comment on our YouTube page.

We’ve got more news on our Facebook page and YouTube channel, and be sure to tune in to this week’s DT podcasts: Trends with Benefits (general tech shenanigans) on Thursdays, and Between the Streams (movie and TV topics) every Friday.

Editors' Recommendations