What sense of entitlement? Nobody here thinks they are entitled to anything. In fact, most are doing exactly as you suggest: taking their business elsewhere, as I did. People are allowed to question the pricing decision. You state Apple is doing what they always do, which is sell a premium product. The issue most people have is that prices of smart phones are dropping overall, and Apple's market share will be impacted by not offering a lower price option. Perhaps they don't care, but I bet The Street will.
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Apple Announces Colorful New iPhone 5c, Starting at $99 on Two-Year Contract
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What sense of entitlement? Nobody here thinks they are entitled to anything. In fact, most are doing exactly as you suggest: taking their business elsewhere, as I did. People are allowed to question the pricing decision. You state Apple is doing what they always do, which is sell a premium product. The issue most people have is that prices of smart phones are dropping overall, and Apple's market share will be impacted by not offering a lower price option. Perhaps they don't care, but I bet The Street will.
No, because the 5C is a year old 5 in a cheaper plastic case. With the 5S you get a lot more phone for your money.
If you want to spend £469 on a new phone because it is pretty you go right ahead. It is your money.
Of course you are exactly right - but the reaction of many to give Apple an ultimatum or they will lose them as a customer smacks of a sense of entitlement that implies that the majority of posters in general on this thread feel that Apple DOES owe them, for some reason or other.
Do you mean dumb as in you don't like it, or dumb as in you think it won't work out well for Apple? For the latter, time will tell, but I suspect these will sell very well, which would show that this wasn't a dumb move on Apple's part. In fact, if anything, the way I can see the 5C hurting Apple is it might hurt sales of the 5S. Up until now, Apple has only had one current iPhone version in production at a time, with different models differentiated by clear variations in storage capacity, which is something most consumers have an easy time understanding. Now consumers are being asked to choose also between a 5S with higher processor speed, vs. the 5C that looks cooler (to some people.) I suspect most non-MR-reading consumers would have no idea of how a faster phone would benefit them (it most likely won't), whereas they can easily see that they might like a blue phone better, so lots of them will prefer the 5C. Those who actually care about specs will go for the 5S.
THIS! This is exactly what I think more people will think, and what today's announcement means is that the price of the iPhone has just been reduced, who will be pretentious or stupid enough to pay for the more expensive one that does the exact same thing as the cheaper one? Squandering fools, that's who.
I'm a giffgaff customer, love them, I bought my iPhone 5 outright and rather than even pay a recurring amount every month (which is cheap, giffgaff is truly great), I just load my account up with credit and it costs me £10 every few months by using iMessage and FaceTime (and the FaceTime Audio feature with iOS 7 I'll be using it even more!) and free Wifi around London and at home.
Good on you for the 5C, wish I'd waited a few months I'd have made the same decision.
I use Straight Talk on AT&T towers. Works exactly the same. Most MVNOs use either AT&T or T-Mobile towers, so service is exactly the same. Only no LTE. This is the only difference. Regional carrier does not equal MVNO. These "limitations" that you and others in this thread mention are just not true.
I disagree consumers are reading more reviews and understanding simple technology better. If the 5C & 5s looked the same maybe, but that home button and housing stands out right off the bat with the side by side.
When the customer ask what's the difference between the 5C & 5S and the salesman tells them, 5S has a new faster processor, the finger reader and explains what can be done with it, reworked home button, better cameras, more elegant housing & the 5C is basically last years phone it's not going to be hard to decide on the 5S and then throw in the salesman will say if you every want a color case you can just buy a slip here, flea market or ebay.
Of course it will hurt sales. They have been getting killed on their stock price because the 4/4S sell so well. So what they did was make a cheaper phone this year and sell it at the same price so their profit margins will not be hurt as bad as the last year was. So really, all this talk about emerging markets was non-sense. What they are really doing is trying to help their profit margins because the cheaper iPhones are cannibalizing their flagship phone.
The 5C doesn't do any favors to customers in the US market. It puts a plastic phone in the price slot where there used to be a phone with premium materials. LIke others have said, buy the 5S and don't worry about it.
The real question is what will be the price point of the 5C in China. Stay tuned, their unveiling is still to come tonight. If there is a market where Apple needs to price the 5C aggresively, its China where Apple market share is getting crushed by less expensive alternatives.
The real question is what will be the price point of the 5C in China. Stay tuned, their unveiling is still to come tonight. If there is a market where Apple needs to price the 5C aggresively, its China where Apple market share is getting crushed by less expensive alternatives.
Exactly, you're saving $100 on a >$2000 contract, and end up with a Fisher-Price plastic phone.
The prices of high end flagship smart phones are not dropping in general, actually, are they? Outliers aside I mean. What does an S4 cost off contract? Note 2? HTC One? S3 even?
The issue seems to be more of an expectation that this was going to be a somehow significantly lower cost phone - an expectation created by the media based on trying to tie together different rumours - and since lots of people wanted to believe it, now they are upset it hasn't come to pass.
The sense of entitlement I am describing comes not from the reaction to the price, but more from the disappointment of Apple not delivering on this misguided expectation that has been built up, and the subsequent ultimatum and threatening that each individual poster has done saying they will leave the platform unless Apple corrects or changes or fixes things to fulfil that expectation.
Seriously!!!! Ugliest. Case. Ever. I didn't even believe that was an official Apple case until I saw it on their website... wtf.
BUT if one of those customers has a scrap of common sense (rare in this world I know) they'll realise that they don't necessarily need those additional things.
It's swings and roundabouts really. At first I was a bit miffed by the 5C price but the more I've thought about it in relation to the plan I use it is an ok deal.
Still a bit confused as to why they dropped the 5 all together though.
Apple fanboys: DAMAGE CONTROL! DAMAGE CONTROL!
Their stock has dropped $14 since this morning. Pretty messed up when I am regretting selling my iphone 5 now. Could have at least used that for a decent ipod but never a phone. I knew apple was going to fail today but not this bad. This crappy new iphone now has to make it a whole year like this while Samsung and LG dominate and get even better. It was sad last year and now its worth crying over. Apple you suck.
Their stock has dropped $14 since this morning. Pretty messed up when I am regretting selling my iphone 5 now. Could have at least used that for a decent ipod but never a phone. I knew apple was going to fail today but not this bad. This crappy new iphone now has to make it a whole year like this while Samsung and LG dominate and get even better. It was sad last year and now its worth crying over. Apple you suck.
First off, no salesperson will ever list all those features of the 5S. 99% of customers will not even care about most of those features. The only 2 features they really added that customers will care about is the fingerprint reader and a better camera. But if a person already has an iPhone they are probably already satisfied with their camera. It will be a tough sale for sure. Obviously, current iPhone users will choose the 5S. But it remains to be seen if the new features are important enough to new customers to buy the 5S over the 5C. Especially when contract prices are going to be so low to walk out of the door with the 5C.
Ok, I'll give you the iPad. But that is one example in a long history.
Apple II was more expensive than Atari, or Commodore, and other 6502 based machines.
Macintosh was more expensive than Atari ST, Commodore Amiga or Acorn Archimedes and other 68000 based machines.
Apple's line of laser printers were almost criminally expensive.
Macintosh was and still is more expensive than similar spec PCs.
The iPod was more expensive than Creative or Zune offerings.
The iPod was initially cheaper than other tablet offerings. That has since passed as they give away Android Tablets with newspaper subscriptions.
So yes, there is one example in 40 years. I'm sure there are other examples, but the trend is quite the opposite.
It's not about entitlement--it's about choices. I really wanted to buy my first iphone. But when they price them at triple the cost of an android competitor, it's really hard to consider them as a viable option. I would pay a premium of $50, or $100, or possibly even $150 over say a Nexus 4 which will perform similarly, because I think iOS is superior to Android. But The 5C is priced $350 more than the Nexus 4, which is just insane. So many people will choose the cheaper option.
I don't own a smartphone, but I do own Apple and iOS devices. I would like a smartphone, but Apple refuses to make one at what I (and now the majority of phone buyers) consider a reasonable price. They are losing market share, and I think this will continue or even increase with the 5C's absurd pricing. Apple penetrated the mp3 player market with a variety of products -- ipod, ipod touch, ipod nano, ipod mini, but they still really only have one phone (the price difference between 5C and 5S is negligible). People would love an affordable iphone.
If nothing else, take the ipod touch ($230 retail) and add on the cellular radio that is in the ipad/mini ($130 retail) and you have a $360 phone. Still way cheaper than the 5C and they don't even have to design anything and they keep existing profit margins. But no, we get this. Our reaction is not entitlement, it's disappointment that we won't be part of the superior Apple ecosystem at these insane prices.
this is not exactly true because of the design change (all those greens an pinks) which might turn off some buyers aiming to buy a year old version. It might attract others but it's not clear what the net result will be. It might work out as it did with the ipad mini (I recall most people here thought it was too expensive too) or it might not. We'll see. I do find it very hard to believe that at this price point 5C will give a substantial boost to overall iphone sales, especially in emerging markets where the phones are not subsidized. I wonder what the price will be in China. is this known yet? Perhaps it will be more aggressively priced there?
Yeah, what were they thinking?
I don't know where you are looking, but when I check my online retailer in Germany the price for an S4 is EUR 439,- while the 5C is EUR 599,-
If you wanna go cheap in Germany I would advice anyone to either get:
- Nexus 4 for EUR 319
or
- S4 Mini for EUR 280
So I can get two cheap android phones (!!!!!) for the price of one "cheap" iphone (5C). Please, the 5C is not twice as good as the two phones above.
I will still buy a 5S for myself, but I have a hard time figuring while someone in China would wanna pay sooo much more for a plastic iphone while the android phones are sooooo much cheaper.
Big fail apple