While we noticed that the iPhone 6S shipped early in China to cover an expected hole in European sales, and that Asian suppliers were seeing Jobs’ Mob orders drying up, the Tame Apple press continued to insist that Apple was continuing to grow.

Even when Apple cut iPhone 6S orders to suppliers by a third, the press talked about shortages and how they were “jumping off the shelves.”

Now even Apple’s favourite news agency Reuters is admitting that the iPhone 6S was a failure because it failed to offer anyone anything new. It is also slowly dawning on it that Apple is losing its innovative streak and the profits it has generated.

Apple is to reports December-quarter results on Tuesday and we personally think that it has will have its PR teams and most loyal members of the Tame Apple Press preparing for the spin of its life.

To be fair to Apple, smartphone demand is weak and it would normally be unfair for us to single out Jobs’ Mob for failing in this market. But the truth of the matter is that reality is finally catching up with Apple. It has not come up with anything new for a while and has nothing on the horizon. Yet it has, through its various agents, claimed that its technology was immune to what the rest of the world is facing.

The famous reality distortion field worked on the press, and shareholders who needed to believe in the Emperor’s new clothes mostly because they had sunk huge amounts of cash into it. But the problem was that when Steve Jobs was in charge, it had at least one person at the top who did not believe in his own BS.

Now the mantel has passed to his followers we are left with people who were bewitched into believing in the iCon in the first place. As a result they can’t make rational decisions because they really believed the iPhone6s was totally different from other phones, even when it was at best the same as everything else and at worse, expensive and behind the rest. They expect that the Chinese would sell a kidney to buy iPhones, all they had to do was open a shop and they would come is part of the religious weakness that infected Apple since Jobs’ death.

Now we are seeing a panic which comes from the fact that poor decisions are now effecting Apple’s cash mountain. It is now having to spin facts which no longer suit its internal narrative.

For example Suppliers said Apple now only gave them orders one month in advance, instead of the usual three months. However Apple says individual data from its supply chain was not an accurate reflection of its outlook. Everyone knows that is simply untrue.

TSMC, which makes some of the chips that go into iPhones, forecast this month that first-quarter revenues would likely fall by up to 11 percent year-on-year, adding that demand for high-end smartphones would also be weak.
Foxconn, which assembles most iPhones, had taken a rare decision to cut working hours over a major holiday during which workers usually rack up overtime. It saw its December revenues slump by a fifth and 2015 sales miss expectations. First-quarter revenues at both LG Display and Hynix are expected to fall around 10 percent.

So if it is all about the iPhone6S failing as a product, surely Apple will improve in the middle of the year when it releases new stuff. However that is not a done thing. There is only so much you can stuff into a smartphone and Apple rivals Samsung and Huawei are getting good at doing the same thing much cheaper.

Apple still has piles of money, and a fanatical fanbase of six million who can be guaranteed to buy whatever it puts out within 24 hours of it hitting the shops (they even bought the iWatch) but until it comes up with the next fad it is going to see its share slump even more deeply.

And what can it come up with? Apple fanboys claim that Apple is a bit like Willy Wonkers’ factory where new technology is invented all the time. But the reality is that Apple’s R&D spend is much lower than many other companies and most of its “innovations” are advertised as part of its marketing. On that basis we can say that Apple might be looking at VR and AR and a self-driving car. These are years away from becoming solid products. This could mean that Apple is a long way from getting its act together.