Yet another report from yet another source that has no real idea what Apple or its suppliers are doing, conflates parts orders with iPhone production. As before, this means nothing for iPhone demand.
As AppleInsider recently pointed out, and investment firm JP Morgan even more recently agreed, Apple has not cut orders for the iPhone 18 Pro. Now a new report says that it must have cut those orders, because it's raised how many of the iPhone Duo it wants built.
According to Chinese financial news site STCN, Apple has increased orders for the iPhone Duo by 30%. This is for devices expected to be sold before the end of 2026.
The report seems to presume, for one thing, that manufacturing is a zero sum game for Apple. So if the iPhone Duo is up 30%, it says that the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max orders are therefore reduced by up to 15% each, which is absolutely not the case.
But it also says that the new, higher order for the iPhone Duo does not exceed 10 million units. Rather than being an exclusive as claimed, that same figure was reported back in July.
Don't count on it
Only, even if that means this new report has backing for its iPhone Duo figures, the percentages don't work.
Say iPhone Duo is now on exactly 10 million orders, and that it was therefore previously on around 7 million. This report claims that to make three million more of the iPhone Duo, Apple has cut three million iPhone 18 Pro orders.
But separately Apple is predicted to make around 80 million iPhones across the new Pro line and the iPhone Duo, in the last calendar quarter of 2026. Since Apple never releases figures, it's impossible to know, but it's easy to guess that a 30% drop in iPhone 18 Pro orders would be more than three million units.
Apple's new iPhone 18 Pro Max.
Perhaps this is all because it's a confusing report in machine translation, but we've spoken to some more fluent folks than us, and they too think it's poorly sourced and written. It also appears to count the iPhone Duo as one of the Pro models, which is why it further calculates that the total amount of orders has not changed.
Then if the math wasn't enough, it appears that the entire report is based on components rather than finished iPhones. Apple has many manufacturing partners and uses many more component suppliers around the world.
As it has always been, component increases or decreases has very little to do with the number of iPhones produced.
So while it's possible that interest in the iPhone Duo has tempered that for the iPhone 18 Pro, none of this report is able to stand that up. And in the meantime, iPhone 18 Pro orders are such that shipping takes 10-12 days.
Pre-orders for the iPhone Duo begin on October 16. The device will ship, and be in stores, on October 23.
