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This just shows how much Apple mark up their phone price!

Ok? And the other smart phone manufacturers don’t? All smart phone manufacturers ‘mark up’ their phones, because how would you expect them to make a significant profit if they’re charging say at/or just ‘above cost’?

And for the record, Apples phone prices aren’t really that far away from the competition in terms of their ‘markup’, if you look at the current trend in smart phones prices, they are all priced in the same realm for current line ups supported by carriers/retail market.
 
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So Samsung's phone business increased 67% to $2b while Apple's phone business brought in $56b.

Sold similar numbers of phones... but Apple sales value is 28x higher???

No, revenues and sales are the same thing. Apple revenues, at $56B, would be about 2.7x Samsung's. The article says: "Samsung's mobile business increased 67 percent to $2.13 billion, while its revenue increased 7 percent to $21.1 billion." For some reason, MacRumors dropped the word "profits" after "mobile business".
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I swear, Macrumors loves to post articles like these to troll Samsung users on here. I mean that’s great and all that Apple surpassed Samsung, (and I’m an avid Apple supporter), but I feel like these types of threads just end up with endless debacles about which smartphone manufacturer is ‘better’. [<— Which we all know is Apple. ]

If Samsung users are on the iPhone threads, I don't think they are the ones being trolled.
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Ah, you know, it's rather Apple that should rethink its strategy. When you only sell so-called high-end products, there are 7+ billion people on the planet that will never ever be able to afford your products. So Apple is milking the people who have the money to spare, but there is a natural limit to that sales strategy as well. Unless everything capitalists want to believe and unlike everything they teach people in business schools, you just cannot grow forever. Resources - and markets - are limited.

Being able to reach a billion+ active devices with super expensive products is quite an achievement, and obviously a relevant market share in first world countries. But... "The rest of us" is buying something else that doesn't run iOS, and we are the larger community. Maybe not by budget, but by sheer amount of people. Even though people like to look at a Porsche and even though Porsche gets a lot of press coverage, most people on this planet will never ever buy or drive one, and most of what you see on the streets are cheaper low-end cars. But unlike an iPhone, a Porsche at least still is a real status symbol...

In the grand scheme of things, though, none of this really matters. These things are just cars and phones and civilization won't crumble if they go away over night.

Comparing a $700 luxury phone with a $100K luxury car is a bit of a stretch. But, I suppose, if you believe that corporations should not be in the business of making money, you might be right. As a global charity, Apple is clearly failing; and if that's their intent, they should change their strategy, as you suggest.
 
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Another thing to remember about this Holiday quarter (Oct-Dec) is that Samsung's flagship phones were not entirely new during this time.

Galaxy S10 came out in March... and I'd imagine most Samsung fans bought them in the Apr-Jun quarter or in the following Jul-Sep quarter.

Galaxy Note 10 came out in August... which is much closer to the Holiday quarter... but it's a lower-volume seller.

So if we're strictly talking about the Q4 Holiday quarter... which is the topic of this article... then Samsung is at a slight disadvantage.

In prior years, however, this didn't matter. Even thought their flagship phone launched many months earlier... Samsung was still able to be the top seller in Q4.

But according to the data in this article... they're not the top seller in Q4 2019. And they actually sold fewer smartphones in Q4 2019 than they did in Q4 2018.

That's a huge miss for Samsung.
 
Ah, you know, it's rather Apple that should rethink its strategy. When you only sell so-called high-end products, there are 7+ billion people on the planet that will never ever be able to afford your products. So Apple is milking the people who have the money to spare, but there is a natural limit to that sales strategy as well. Unless everything capitalists want to believe and unlike everything they teach people in business schools, you just cannot grow forever. Resources - and markets - are limited.

Being able to reach a billion+ active devices with super expensive products is quite an achievement, and obviously a relevant market share in first world countries. But... "The rest of us" is buying something else that doesn't run iOS, and we are the larger community. Maybe not by budget, but by sheer amount of people. Even though people like to look at a Porsche and even though Porsche gets a lot of press coverage, most people on this planet will never ever buy or drive one, and most of what you see on the streets are cheaper low-end cars. But unlike an iPhone, a Porsche at least still is a real status symbol...

In the grand scheme of things, though, none of this really matters. These things are just cars and phones and civilization won't crumble if they go away over night.
I'd rather not have Apple change. There are hundreds if not thousands of companies that follow other strategies. On the other hand, there's never been a company like Apple and I doubt there ever will be one. In fact, I think this is one in fourteen million six hundred and five parallel universes Apple succeeded. While civilization wont crumble, we would be stupid to loose it.
 
I agree with you about not being everything to everybody. However, sometimes it behooves a business to have some lower priced offerings to bring folks into the ecosystem. This is especially true for young folks that you want to pickup as life long customers. As I mentioned before, I think the base iPad is a great example. There really is no better tech value IMHO. It would be great if Apple offered something similar in their iPhone line-up. You could argue the iPhone 8 at $449 is close, but I think the reported iPhone 9 at $399 might be the ticket.

That’s what the second hand market is for. Between their excellent build quality and longer software support, iPhones tend to hold their resale value better than android smartphones.

As such, Apple has been offering trade-in programmes which brings in a steady stream of used iPhones which they can then refurbish and resell. Or existing iPhone users can do this themselves via third party means.

This allows Apple to keep their iPhones at their current level of pricing, while also allowing them to keep growing their user base through the sales of used iPhones. Even if Apple earns no money through this initial sales, there is still room to monetise this user further via its ecosystem (apps, accessories, services).

Kinda like the best of both worlds for Apple. I am surprised I don’t see this strategy being discussed more by analysts, who keep insisting that the only way to keep growing iPhone users is to lower their price.
 
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Let's face it, Apple doesn't have as many low end models. So yes, Apple will be making higher profits. That won't change any time soon. I do wonder how accurate this is based in total amount sold though.
 
Imagine Samsung's profit if they sold $699 720p LCD phones like iPhone 11. If Apple sold TVs, you'd be buying 720p LCD for the price of 4K OLED.
 
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So Samsung's phone business increased 67% to $2b while Apple's phone business brought in $56b.

Sold similar numbers of phones... but Apple sales value is 28x higher???

Samsung better hope Apple never go after to budget end of the market since it seems to make most of it's volume sales there. (the A30 is a pretty nice non-phone you can put a big SD card in and use for media consumption and wifi browsing instead of phone calls)

Perhaps Samsung should have a Fire Sale... oh they tried once before...

I could be wrong but if Apple entered the budget market they would no longer have such high numbers. Isn't that the whole point?
 
Imagine Samsung's profit if they sold $699 720p LCD phones like iPhone 11. If Apple sold TVs, you'd be buying 720p LCD for the price of 4K OLED.

Samsung could try, but the reality is that so long as they continue to use android and lack their own ecosystem, this is as far as they go.
 
Bragging about more profit is complete nonsense when it doesn't convert more android users to iPhone.
Um, no. Business is about making money. Apple doesn’t even sell cheap iPhones, so they aren’t in the market you’re comparing. Silly.

Apple wants customers, but not so bad they are willing to give away hardware and software.
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Ah, you know, it's rather Apple that should rethink its strategy. When you only sell so-called high-end products, there are 7+ billion people on the planet that will never ever be able to afford your products. So Apple is milking the people who have the money to spare, but there is a natural limit to that sales strategy as well. Unless everything capitalists want to believe and unlike everything they teach people in business schools, you just cannot grow forever. Resources - and markets - are limited.

Being able to reach a billion+ active devices with super expensive products is quite an achievement, and obviously a relevant market share in first world countries. But... "The rest of us" is buying something else that doesn't run iOS, and we are the larger community. Maybe not by budget, but by sheer amount of people. Even though people like to look at a Porsche and even though Porsche gets a lot of press coverage, most people on this planet will never ever buy or drive one, and most of what you see on the streets are cheaper low-end cars. But unlike an iPhone, a Porsche at least still is a real status symbol...

In the grand scheme of things, though, none of this really matters. These things are just cars and phones and civilization won't crumble if they go away over night.
I encourage you to to read their latest quarterly report, thoroughly, and come back and report if they need to rethink their strategy.

It’s far more likely you need to rethink your opinion.
 
So now that Apple is finally the market leader in a product category does that mean we're going to see all the security issues and viruses that all those know-it-all geeks out there claim only happen to Windows or Android because they're the market leader?

Yeah. Not holding my breath. :rolleyes:
 
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Imagine Samsung's profit if they sold $699 720p LCD phones like iPhone 11. If Apple sold TVs, you'd be buying 720p LCD for the price of 4K OLED.

Ummm... 720p? Huh?

From the iPhone 11 Tech Specs page:
“1792‑by‑828‑pixel resolution at 326 ppi”

326ppi not enough for ya?
 
Ummm... 720p? Huh?

From the iPhone 11 Tech Specs page:
“1792‑by‑828‑pixel resolution at 326 ppi”

326ppi not enough for ya?
It’s an old, tired talking point from when the XR was introduced in 2018.

The LCD displays on iPads are awesome, and they’re 264 ppi. Some people are hung up on specs though 🤷‍♂️
 
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Pretty incredible. Sell the same amount of phones for $71B more in revenue. Samsung needs to rethink their strategy, but I am not sure where they go. Focus on the low end and revenue dips even further, focus on the high end and Apple is your main competition. It's a lose lose.
They should perhaps focus on quality implementations. I’ve got an S10 (as I refuse to deal with the Pixel 4’s battery life) and the underscreen fingerprint reader is infuriatingly bad. Literally every time I pick it up and try to unlock it, it annoys me as it takes multiple attempts until I luck in. It’s like they never tested it.
 
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They should perhaps focus on quality implementations. I’ve got an S10 (as I refuse to deal with the Pixel 4’s battery life) and the underscreen fingerprint reader is infuriatingly bad. Literally every time I pick it up and try to unlock it, it annoys me as it takes multiple attempts until I luck in. It’s like they never tested it.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the Samsung way as of late. Bring out a flashy feature to try and garner interest, but it ultimately fails or provides no value. It’s a shame because competition is great for everyone.
 
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Why would you care, though?


I think it implies Apple was coming from behind and was more or less level, for that quarter.


You think? I think the getting-rid-of-the-home-button was such a big change that iPhones with home buttons looks really out of date now in a way previous generation designs never had, even years after their release. Of course that's just my taste, dunno how it will affect sales.

I dropped my X and had it replaced a few days ago. While in best buy, I was messing around with 8, and it felt fantastic in hand. The size and weight were refreshing. The bezels and home button didn't bother me at all.
 
I dropped my X and had it replaced a few days ago. While in best buy, I was messing around with 8, and it felt fantastic in hand. The size and weight were refreshing. The bezels and home button didn't bother me at all.
I think the “SE2” is going to be a huge hit. There are a lot of people who have a 6/6s/7 that would find a $399 4.7” TouchID iPhone to be a perfect upgrade.

We already know they like the display, don’t care about having the best camera or FaceID—or even prefer TouchID—and the price is almost half of the hit iPhone 11, assuming it does come in at $399 as rumored.
 
I dropped my X and had it replaced a few days ago. While in best buy, I was messing around with 8, and it felt fantastic in hand. The size and weight were refreshing. The bezels and home button didn't bother me at all.
I think it’s the rectangular screen that bothers me most now. Those square corners inside the rounded corners of the body just feel so incongruous, like it’s just been jammed in there and the design isn’t finished.

Isn’t the size the same, just that less of it’s screen?

Was the 8 the one with the gorgeous shiny black metal finish? That’s my favourite iPhone finish ever, perhaps after the 5C...
 
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