I think they have jumped the shark on pricing. They have assumed because people like myself bought the X that they will be able to keep selling phones at that price, but they will see diminishing returns on that gamble.
I like many on this site replaced my iPhone every single year and sold my old phone back to Gazelle. When the X was announced, I was very much under the understanding it was a lower volume product because they didn’t have great supplies on the OLED screen and that I was paying to be bleeding edge, and the changes where the future of the iPhone. I very much expected the price of the follow up model to be lower... if they continue selling phones at the $1000-1200 range, my replacement cycle is going to drop from annual to maybe once every 3 years. It’s not like I even really use the gaming or AR features, or expect to use the machine learning capabilities. I stick the the basic apps for financial, web browsing, online stores/local companies, and streaming video. I’m not impressed by larger screens, don’t care about faster games, etc. I just want good battery life, a quality screen, and faster data speeds. I feel like for the most part, the people who can now afford it generally have the features they need and don’t need to upgrade, where as younger people who are more likely to be “high end” gaming or using AR will be less likely to afford it. So who is buying phones at $1200? And more importantly, how many reliable annual upgrader will stick to upgrading annually?
