Apple to Stop Selling iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 Models in Germany While Appealing Broader Sales Ban [Updated]

[FairlyKors]

This will accelerate Apple to make their own modem (and a plethora of other components). In short term, it's look like Qualcomm really pushes Apple into a corner. However, long term, it will only guarantee Apple's being less dependent to 3rd parties like Qualcomm. I'm sure other modem suppliers like Mediatek and of course, intel, will be pushed to offer Apple their best work, and Apple's strict requirements will only make, let's say, intel modems better.

In the long run, Qualcomm is doing a disfavor to themselves. Many big OEMs are already shying off Qualcomm. Take Xiaomi. They are already shifting their best selling Redmi series to Mediatek (Redmi 6 and 7). Huawei have their own Kirin chips. Samsung of course would prefer their exynos solution, but stuck with Qualcomm for US carrier support. The Android OEMs should be wary of what Qualcomm can do to them, and unlike Apple, they don't really have the cash to fight litigations with Qualcomm.

That some interesting analysis. If I were s Qualcomm shareholder I wouldn’t be cheering on this behavior. Qualcomm is hell bent on cutting off its nose to spite its face, and like you said, that’s unfortunately going to affect other suppliers too.

I think Apple should use the injunctions as a reason to offer a rebate or lower prices on its latest phones—at least in markets where competition is super competitive and a downward adjustment in price would be beneficial but hard to pull off without it looking desperate.
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You know, having owed 4 iPhones since the iPhone 3G I would have said the exact same thing. That's up until the 13th September 2018 (day after watching the Xs/Xr keynote) when I went out and bought an Android phone. iOS is significantly better than Android, I have zero doubts about that, but I'm not missing it. Essentially, I have no requirement for what differentiates it.

I doubt I'll buy another iPhone again. Yes I need to take that with a grain of salt as I have also said I'd never buy an Android phone until late this year. However the simple fact that Apple chooses no longer to compete in the mid-range space (where the iPhone SE was) there's not a lot for me to think about. I have no budget for a premium smartphone as I don't have any requirement for one. Computers are very much another matter where I'm "happy" to spend that extra.
[doublepost=1545341886][/doublepost]

Every other manufacturer can seem to be able get Qualcomm chips into sub-$300 phones. Why is it so hard for Apple to get Qualcomm chips into an over-$1000 phone?

The choice is obviously yours, and maybe it makes complete sense. But for me, regarding a “mid-priced” phone, the Xr has gone on sale for $200 off a couple times in the US, which places it in the mid-range price bracket as far as I’m concerned. Like you however, I’d rather spend extra money on a computer where there’s space and room to do real work, but, it’s still hard to imagine a realistic price where putting all my data under Google’s stewardship rather than Apple’s would make the switch worth it. That said, things change, and this most recent iPhone release pushed into new territory—since, even if the phone I buy makes sense, there’s still a “cost” associated with wanting the $1,500 phone (that was previously easy to justify) and having to settle on a compromised model.

 

[Ankou_Sabat]

Who needs forced obsolescence when Qualcom helps out by making "only" the iPhone X/XR/XS (Max) models available for purchase. Maybe Apple should thank them for increasing sales of the new models?

 

[JosephAW]

How convenient

 

[pratikindia]

Qualcomm can’t compete with apples SoCs so they need to block the sales of apples phones...

The new Snapdragon 855 beats the A12.

 

[Gasu E.]

Remember that time when they had to comply with UK law and had to put a banner on their homepage ? They put it at the bottom in very small writing, which, IMHO, showed a lack of respect of the law in this situation. They were told to make it bigger.

Random comment is random.

 

[rlhamil]

Apple should buy Qualcomm, keep all the patents, and sell the rest to the trash man. Worth it to crush a bunch of parasites.

 

[run1976]

Pricing is the shareholders fault/greed, I don't consider Apple to be a shady company.

Than you haven‘t looked closely on their repair and insurance (apple care) pricing. That is a deliberate money grab. Repair prices hiked even faster than product prices. That incentivizes more people to buy the warranty which in itself is quite limited. It does not get much shadier on the legal side of business.

 

[ROGmaster]

Yeah this is a desperate attempt, we all know what when Apple puts its mind and money into something it tends to crush, look at the Qualcomm CPU's vs Apples, easily 3 generations ahead now in performance, last years iPhone X is still faster than the fastest Qualcomm chips.

You don't know what you are talking about.
The Snapdragon 845 still has a better GPU than the A11 and it can overall better maintain it's max performance.
Also even if the Cortex A75 cores found in the S845 are slower they also consume way less power at peak performance in comparison to A11's big cores and they are more than enough for any type of mobile workload.
What I'm trying to say is that in general day to day usage the differences in performance are hardly noticeable and Qualcomm's system on chips are overall quite competitive.
But Qualcomm's System on Chips generally do have better connectivity/radios so faster and more efficient LTE or Wifi which is crucial for Smartphones.
Qualcomm's latest 7nm SOC looks to bump up the performance in every area by quite a decent margin. If it doesn't have any thermal/efficiency weaknesses so if it behaves like the S845 and 835 did it will be an immensely successful SOC.
But sure if the only thing that matters to you is Geekbench single core scores then yeah the A12 is za best.

Now probably you are implying that Apple will make a faster modem than Qualcomm and honestly that sounds amusing. Apple's won't be able to match Qualcomm's modems without using most of Qualcomm's essential 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G CDMA patents. How would that be productive to Apple or in Apple's advantage?

 

[Osamede]

It’s laughable that Apple is making money hand over fist ...but claims that “Qualcomm’s business model would harm consumers”.

Like what we are supposed to believe that Apple would lower prices, as opposed to taking the money right into profits.

Sorry but Apple man up and don’t hide behind “consumers” in this battle of the bigwigs.

 

[nebo1ss]

This will accelerate Apple to make their own modem (and a plethora of other components). In short term, it's look like Qualcomm really pushes Apple into a corner. However, long term, it will only guarantee Apple's being less dependent to 3rd parties like Qualcomm. I'm sure other modem suppliers like Mediatek and of course, intel, will be pushed to offer Apple their best work, and Apple's strict requirements will only make, let's say, intel modems better.

In the long run, Qualcomm is doing a disfavor to themselves. Many big OEMs are already shying off Qualcomm. Take Xiaomi. They are already shifting their best selling Redmi series to Mediatek (Redmi 6 and 7). Huawei have their own Kirin chips. Samsung of course would prefer their exynos solution, but stuck with Qualcomm for US carrier support. The Android OEMs should be wary of what Qualcomm can do to them, and unlike Apple, they don't really have the cash to fight litigations with Qualcomm.

You don't seem to understand the issue. Its not a hardware issue. It does not matter if apple or intel or whoever makes the modem you cannot use someone else IP in your product and not pay the tax.

 

[Caprice]

Yes, very convenient for Apple to take out the cheaper models right before Christmas to force last minute shoppers towards the overpriced ones.
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No, not an excuse. Apple is complying with the law.

People are free to purchase or not purchase phones that are not subject to the court's order.

But then how come that in China Apple has not yet stopped selling their older phones DESPITE the same court order? Seems to me like they are weighing their market shares because in China people aren't jumping on the newer phones whereas in Germany they can expect people to opt for the more expensive ones if the older ones are taken out of the store.

 

[justperry]

Yes, very convenient for Apple to take out the cheaper models right before Christmas to force last minute shoppers towards the overpriced ones.
[doublepost=1545394399][/doublepost]

But then how come that in China Apple has not yet stopped selling their older phones DESPITE the same court order? Seems to me like they are weighing their market shares because in China people aren't jumping on the newer phones whereas in Germany they can expect people to opt for the more expensive ones if the older ones are taken out of the store.

There's a simple and short answer, Germany is not China.

 

[GregJohn]

more pathetic attempts after apple dropped Qualcomm.... they will bankrupt within a year and Apple will still be Apple

 

[Infinite Vortex]

The choice is obviously yours, and maybe it makes complete sense. But for me, regarding a “mid-priced” phone, the Xr has gone on sale for $200 off a couple times in the US, which places it in the mid-range price bracket as far as I’m concerned.

That might be so but I got my mid-range phone for little (and I mean less than $50 more) than the "gone on sale for $200 off" amount. That is, a scratch more than the $200. Quoting on-sale prices to justify a price range is somewhat a false economy to me. If you break/damage it (or it stops working right on its own) its not like you can replace that phone at a sale price unless you're prepared to be without one. When it comes to repairs, irrespective of how much you paid for it, original part repair costs are going to be hefty. AppleCare/insurance pricing is also the same irrespective of how much you paid for it. At sub-$300 I'll just go out and buy a new phone and then decide whether the old phone is worth fixed and/or then selling.

but, it’s still hard to imagine a realistic price where putting all my data under Google’s stewardship rather than Apple’s would make the switch worth it.

I don't know how you operate but data source/destination relationships have changed very little with the change to Android. Granted I'm advantaged by 1) having my data predominantly on OS X Server (and nothing has or will change on that front - contacts & calendars are still located in-house), and, 2) I had the time, and put in the time, to truly think what data I had and where it was to go.

There's very little data that Google has now that they didn't have before. I was already forced into using Google Maps for transit data because Apple aren't able to offer it to me. I am already using OneDrive for my file data so nothing moved there as it comes with Office 365. But again, I live so little of my life on my phone that its no "big win, nor any loss, for anyone at all. The only winner, if you can really call it that, in fact was WhatsApp (so Facebook) as I needed an iMessage replacement. Again, WhatsApp already had that data as everyone else has my data in their address books. I do admit I did spend time stripping out data from Contacts on my Mac before getting onto WhatsApp. That's one company I really don't trust.

As I said, I do so little on my phone that all of the pro-con arguments between Apple and Google etc don't really mean much. I just know that it isn't worth more than $4-500. Don't get me wrong, the Android phone nearly went out the window on more than the one occasion. Mostly it was a frustration through a differing mentality. Building everything up new on any significant device change is lengthy and riddled with hurdles that you don't expect. But once the differences are understood I do truly feel that I have a phone that's significantly more in line with what I want to do and I have gained more than I've lost even without considering the price differences.

That said, things change, and this most recent iPhone release pushed into new territory—since, even if the phone I buy makes sense, there’s still a “cost” associated with wanting the $1,500 phone (that was previously easy to justify) and having to settle on a compromised model.

A cost that most don't consider until its too late… my 80 year old mother recently fell awkwardly in order to protect her expensive iPhone X rather than to protect herself. Fortunately the damage wasn't serious but they were significantly more serious than had she not been concerned for the phone at all.

 

[gijoeinla]

Nice. So Apple is taking the cheaper iPhones off the market in Germany and selling only its more expensive devices with the excuse "The courts made us do it".

Hmmm apparently you missed the part that the “cheaper” phones will be available at a few THOUSAND 3rd party retailers JUST NOT AT THEIR OWN Dozen or more. Oh yes. Another planned Apple price gouging conspiracy.

SMH wondering why o why some buy Apple products to begin with. Stick to Samsong.

 

[Elyzien]

Mainly hater responses on this post. Calm down peeps.

 

[nexusrule]

The new Snapdragon 855 beats the A12.

You totally made that up. Are you feeling well?

Also, it's expected to be seen on devices in the next 6 months, when the A12 will be 9-10 months old and ready to be replaced by the next one.

 

[Candykane75]

Apple need to pay the Qualcomm tax and stop trying to dodge and weave.

if apple pays , the next iphone series are going to be even more expensive ...

 

[tooltalk]

if apple pays , the next iphone series are going to be even more expensive ...

Did the previous iPhone model become cheaper because Apple stopped paying Qualcomm and switched to Intel?

 

[Candykane75]

If you look at the trend and sales Numbers you see 70% of Apple costumors are going for a budget friendly IPhone older models and Xr . So i will defenitly see prices go down ... 1000+ models are falling from grace .

 

[I7guy]

If you look at the trend and sales Numbers you see 70% of Apple costumors are going for a budget friendly IPhone older models and Xr . So i will defenitly see prices go down ... 1000+ models are falling from grace .

I don’t see apple reducing the prices of the Xs or Xs max. They just won’t do it. It’s my guess they have done their homework on the retail price and we do not know the internal targets or actual sales and we are just guessing.

 

[Baymowe335]

If you look at the trend and sales Numbers you see 70% of Apple costumors are going for a budget friendly IPhone older models and Xr . So i will defenitly see prices go down ... 1000+ models are falling from grace .

We don’t have sales data for the quarter with the Xr or the XS, so the numbers you’re quoting a speculative at best and basically made up from surveys and other means of extrapolation.

The official numbers we do have from Apple showed a huge success for the $999 iPhone X and 217M phones sold at an AVERAGE price of $761 in FY2018, up $110 per phone from the previous year. This was driven by iPhone X, the phone Apple told us was the most popular iPhone in their lineup.

 

[koruki]

You don't know what you are talking about.
The Snapdragon 845 still has a better GPU than the A11 and it can overall better maintain it's max performance.
Also even if the Cortex A75 cores found in the S845 are slower they also consume way less power at peak performance in comparison to A11's big cores and they are more than enough for any type of mobile workload.
What I'm trying to say is that in general day to day usage the differences in performance are hardly noticeable and Qualcomm's system on chips are overall quite competitive.
But Qualcomm's System on Chips generally do have better connectivity/radios so faster and more efficient LTE or Wifi which is crucial for Smartphones.
Qualcomm's latest 7nm SOC looks to bump up the performance in every area by quite a decent margin. If it doesn't have any thermal/efficiency weaknesses so if it behaves like the S845 and 835 did it will be an immensely successful SOC.
But sure if the only thing that matters to you is Geekbench single core scores then yeah the A12 is za best.

Now probably you are implying that Apple will make a faster modem than Qualcomm and honestly that sounds amusing. Apple's won't be able to match Qualcomm's modems without using most of Qualcomm's essential 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G CDMA patents. How would that be productive to Apple or in Apple's advantage?

I don't know what I'm talking about, you're right. Neither do you actually, they're already showing that thew new chip will not have beat the A12. In terms of using geekbench scores, what is the android's loudest selling point? numbers and spec sheets.

In terms of modems, if the essential patents aren't allowed then really it's not legal since it's restricting competition. How is anyone able to make a modem at all then?

 

[ROGmaster]

Oh yeah Geekbench is everything.
Well the S855 wins in multi-core in GB and overall in Atutu(which test both CPU and GPU) and from how it looks it continues the trend Qualcomm started with the S835 and will also have great efficiency and offer great sustained performance.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 is already immensely successful. https://wccftech.com/qualcomm-5g-30-designs/

what is the android's loudest selling point?

Versatility, flexibility, performance, freedom, choices etc.