Apple had high hopes when it unveiled the iPhone Air back in September. But sales of the ultra-thin smartphone have been so underwhelming that it’s even affecting the launch plans of other companies.
According to industry sources cited by Sina Finance and Jiemian.com (themselves cited by DigiTimes), multiple major Chinese smartphone manufacturers have “frozen or canceled their own ‘Air’ ultra-thin phone projects” in response to the iPhone Air’s reportedly disappointing sales. The list of firms affected includes Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo. Xiaomi in particular was believed to be planning an iPhone Air copycat, but has reportedly canned the project.
A Cupertino apologist could at a push spin this as good news for Apple, which will at least benefit from a lack of competition. But this really serves as further confirmation that the iPhone Air was a misstep. Failure always seemed likely, given Samsung’s struggles with the Galaxy S25 Edge in the summer, but by that point the Air’s development must have been too far along to abort. In any case Apple tends to view failure by other companies as an opportunity rather than a warning sign.
The iPhone Air, like the original iPhone all those years ago, wasn’t the first ultrathin phone to enter its market, but it hoped to be the first to fix the market’s problems. We were told that the Air couldn’t be bent; that its single rear camera lens was actually a “two-in-one camera system;” that its battery life was surprisingly good. But there were still inevitably compromises, and customers appear to prefer the familiar comforts of the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro.
In the months since launch there have been isolated reports that the Air isn’t doing so badly after all, and one reader emailed me recently to praise the Air and to point out that revenue from carrier purchases may be delayed. But while Apple hasn’t yet announced any official sales figures (and won’t ever announce numbers for the Air alone, instead rolling them in with overall iPhone revenue) it’s becoming difficult to ignore the weight of evidence pointing towards failure.
On the production side we’ve heard that Apple has “drastically” cut back its orders; on the customer side there have been reports of “virtually no consumer demand.” And whether or not we choose to believe these reports (or to draw conclusions from the fact that in the U.K. the iPhone Air is the only new model to get a Black Friday discount on Amazon), it’s striking that the market, driven solely by profit, is now turning away from the Air’s path.
Author: David Price, Editor, Macworld
David has been writing about technology for well over two decades, and got on board the Apple hype train when covering the original iPhone launch in 2007. He is an enthusiastic Apple Watch evangelist and feels that the HomePod is misunderstood.