The problem is useability. An AW will fail if it’s marketed to replace a smart watch.
The iPhone SE Version of the 5C is what they needed .
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Apple Lowers Revenue Guidance for Q1 2019 Citing 'Fewer iPhone Upgrades' Than Anticipated
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The problem is useability. An AW will fail if it’s marketed to replace a smart watch.
The iPhone SE Version of the 5C is what they needed .
We didn't upgrade the past few cycles because we already own a high-quality DSLR and I have no interest in another all-glass phone. Remember two years of this?
Apple is hellbent for leather to create apparently thinner phones which, in real world use, are thicker than previous generations since you must use a protective case. On the subway I almost never see an uncased iPhone without a spiderweb of cracks across either the front, back, or more likely both.
And the silly camera bump (because the key selling point for iPhones now is the camera -- watch the keynotes) means they're not really thinner. They just have an unsightly bulge.
Apple is hellbent for leather to create apparently thinner phones which, in real world use, are thicker than previous generations since you must use a protective case. On the subway I almost never see an uncased iPhone without a spiderweb of cracks across either the front, back, or more likely both.
And the silly camera bump (because the key selling point for iPhones now is the camera -- watch the keynotes) means they're not really thinner. They just have an unsightly bulge.
Actually, while Apple has no control over those events, Apple has control over how Apple responds to those events.
Given the state of the world in the last couple year, especially the financial turmoil evidenced in 2018 with predictions of possible downturn in the economy with potential recession on the horizon, Apple has to, just like every other company navigate consumers spending less.
Apple's response to all of that was raising prices.
It's a bold move, but not a particularly well thought out one. a safe, smart leadership will try to weather these sort of downturns by ensuring that more of their products in more people's hands and rely on volume and market to keep them through.
raising prices when consumer confidence is down is only going to push consumeres to either not spend or go elsewhere. right now people are generally thinking how to keep more money in their pockets.
So yeah, Tim Cook is not responsible FOR those events, but he's responsible for navigating Apple through these events.
oh stop it, it's called "being old", there is no good way to interact, just different way. You are posting this comment on a forum with people you never met, and arguing with them, that's pathetic too... so please be open minded and don't judge, just embrace the positive i hate those "it was better before" speech
The "Doomed" shtick is old. I am not sure most people believe it.
However, while lowering expectations by 9billion, Apple is signaling the first time since the mid 2000's that they will not show growth of revenue. this coming after several relatively "flat" quarters of volumes of sales. (Yes, revenue/profit increased over higher ASP, but Volumes have for the most part slowed down)
So one quarter doesn't paint a picture, but history does. the overall trend is that Apple has hit a peak, and is now starting to slow down.
IMHO, that doesn't spell doom. That spells changing markets and changing expectations that Apple is not seemingly hitting right over the last 1-2 years. Combined with changing market dynamics.
Apple can do many things to respond. No company records record growths forever. At some point they have to transition from a growth company to a stable long term company. As long as their #1 motivation right now is profit to pump up stock value, I feel like they'll continue to flatten out, or even start losing sales. Historically, chasing profits for profit sake tends to backfire for multiple reasons.
They need to divest themselves into other industry outside of just mobile tech. They need to get into other major stable industries like Automotive, Media production, and I think the best would be financial services. spreading out your industry like this means a downturn in one segment doesn't threaten to bring your whole company down a peg with it.
Admittedly I'm reading this thread eating banana for entertainment, but I agree at $83 Billion with high profit margins companies would kill to get that.
I think the poster was trying to point out storage has gotten cheaper, and that should negate the rise in cost of new tech. Apple never accounts for storage or other tech substantially dropping in price. Paying 2-3 times the market rate for storage is criminal.
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Supply chain guru, not supply chain god. Supply constraints can and do happen, even for Apple. Supply chain forecasting is both and art and a science and while Apple is better than most, I would bet some of those constraints happened as a result of Apple factoring in a slowdown that they knew was already occurring in the smartphone market.
Some posters have maintained the GPM for the Xs and max are in line with past iPhones for the last 10 years. So it doesn’t seem the prices the the xr/Xs/max are out of line. Especially when other companies have broke the $1,000 barrier.
Well... smartphones are suffering the same fate of computers. The added value is gone... I mean, what can the XS do that the iphone7 won't? And that ridiculous price. The market is saturated and Jobs is dead, so no one is going to tell Tim what to build next to make even more money for Apple.
Apple's current direction kind of reminds me of something Bill Campbell said in 1997, just after becoming a member of Apple's then new board of directors.
See this video from MacWorld 1997, at 14m 47s.
Bill Campbell said:
See this video from MacWorld 1997, at 14m 47s.
It seems board software doesn't allow linking to a video with a specific timecode. 
It's about growth, not strictly just the bottom dollar figures. Apple knew of the slowing sales and raised prices across the board to make up for the slowing sales.
Consumer electronics typically get better and cheaper with each generation. Look at TVs for example, prices fall every year and with (usually) higher quality and more features. I bought a 65" OLED TV for $1600 last year. When on sale, prices are more than halved in two years. Kitchen gadgets too, we bought a pressure cooker for $30. These things will last for many years. Apple's model of rising prices and hoping for 1-2 year upgrade cycles is simply not sustainable.
Yeah SSD storage prices is at the lowest ever, just not when it's soldered onto one of Apple's devices.
This is indeed a fact.
This is not.
Nor is this. You've 1) presumed intent and 2) confused cause and effect.
Uhhhhh. Nope? http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america/#monthly-201006-201812
Claim without a warrant.
Declaring "Facts. Not conjecture or opinion" when you engage in conjecture and opinion doesn't magically make things so. But to be clear, I was referring predominantly to the US in this part, where it would be pretty hard to argue that there isn't saturation.
Also, any time someone alleges that something happened to a stock price "because" of X, I laugh. Corporate valuation experts are not so naively simplistic.
Apple does well when they invent new industries (Apple ][), or go so over-the-top above and beyond existing products they may as well be new industries (iPod/iTunes, iPhone). What's happening now is eerily similar to what happened 20-30 years ago: They made something great for which people were willing to pay a premium, until others made things similar, and for cheaper, and most realized they didn't have to pay a premium. I think Jobs saw this and his strategy was to keep the "I didn't know I wanted it until I saw it" products coming. iMac -> iBook/MBP -> iPod -> iPhone -> iPad on the consumer side, Mac Pro -> OSX Server -> XServe on the pro side (actual PROfessional, not "pro"). They nearly went belly-up in the 90s; Jobs isn't around to bail them out this time. If they want to continue to be competitive, someone there has to get it, and stop trying to just give people a faster horse (another tired meme but still a spot-on -- if inaccurately attributed -- sentiment).
I wouldn't say criminal. Devious, perhaps.
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Sheesh. What has happened to the world where you and I are agreeing and saying a bunch of the same stuff? Next thing you know, I'll be agreeing with Bayemowe!
The worst thing you can do is branch out your main business to too many side business. You end up with half baked of almost everything. This will in turn hurt the company even more. Apple need diverisfy, that is not problem. Apple should be doing is continuing their services segments and use service as leverage. Continuing focuses on AI, AR and maybe branch out to IoT segments. Apple should not be automobile company, financial services company etc at once.
I agree with you, but please remember that Apple under Steve Jobs began doing this with the iPod, that this is not a Tim Cook era thing. Now, whether this started happening at the behest of Tim Cook, or Phill Schiller, or someone else, is not something any of us outside of Apple could possibly know.
Adding those items back in will not help at this point, unless it is accompanied by a revamped pricing structure for those products. The dirty little secret is that Apple has lowered prices, tacitly, at retail outlets like Best Buy and websites such as B&H with constant rotating sales on MacBook Pros, MacBooks, iPhones, iPads, et al. I have lost track of how many times Best Buy ran sales on the 13” and 15” MacBook Pros of between $150 - $400, depending on the model.
That being said, adding the power extension cord and a single USB-C to USB-A adapter back in the box would be a good start as there is a perception (and quite a bit of truth) that Apple is nickel and diming their customers.
Not true.
2 years ago, I bought a 70" 4K TV, and paid less for it than I did for a 40" 1080P TV 10 years ago. When the iPad first came out, it was $500. Now, the base model iPad is $329. Blu-ray players were $400 when they first hit the market. Now for $100, you can get a 4K Blu-ray player that does Netflix, Hulu, etc. 15 years ago, portable GPS/navigation units for cars were $500. Now they're better and half the price. Look at how much computers and laptops were back in the 80s and 90s compared to today. Tech gets better and prices go down. Except with phones.
You should look up the rate before you made your point.
In Sept, 2015, 1USD is 6.36CNY. Now 1USD is 6.87CNY. So the differ is 6%. But as I said before, Apple increased iPhone by 60% instead of 6%.
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I disagree. In 2015 iPhone 6s Plus was the top model of all iPhones. iPhone 8 Plus had never got that honor. The honor was iPhone X in 2017 and iPhone XS Max in 2018.
What are you arguing? iPhone price has gone up dramatically over past years, even in US. It is just not China.
iPhone 6S starts at 649 and iPhone XS Max starts 999. This is 54% price increase. RMB has been waken and it will be waken even more. With government lower bank reserve requirement, more RMB will pure into the market. I think Apple is correct for charging this price.
That not to say Apple is anywhere near price competitive in China nor Apple is offering things that must to have for most Chinese consumers. With local competitors getting better and offering more unique products, there is even less reason for people buying iPhone.
LG just unveiled an 88 inch 8k oled tv. Think you can get that for $500? TV tech goes into the old tech category very fast. Almost within a year. But if you add oled there will be a price premium. Oled has been around since 1989, seems it should have pushed lcd out the door.
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There is also tech, such as oled that hasn’t been any phone. iPhone 1 also debuted at $699? In 11 years having the max start at $999 with all of the tech seems like a bargain.
I can’t speak for anyone except my family, but we don’t want phones so expensive. We just don’t value them that much.
Given the current options, I’ll hang onto our 6 and 6+. Unfortunately all of the carrier deals discount service, which is paid by my employer so no help there.
Given the current options, I’ll hang onto our 6 and 6+. Unfortunately all of the carrier deals discount service, which is paid by my employer so no help there.
I wonder who is going to succeed Cook. His greed and hubris is out of control.
I’m still on an iPhone 6S, it’s a great device and I can afford to buy an XS if I wanted. But I’m not supporting this sort of blatant greed.
Time for Tim to Go. He’s a bean counter and a political ideologue, not a visionary of a Fortune 500 company.
I’m still on an iPhone 6S, it’s a great device and I can afford to buy an XS if I wanted. But I’m not supporting this sort of blatant greed.
Time for Tim to Go. He’s a bean counter and a political ideologue, not a visionary of a Fortune 500 company.
I’ve also heard that there is less brand loyalty or OS tie-in in China because WeChat is the end-all be-all app there. It combines the functionality of FaceBook, Twitter, Grubhub, Apple Pay, banking, Uber/Lyft, OpenTable and then some.
I refer you to trifid's post #57. Hubris has no where to go but down in the long run.