Comment on Analysts: Apple to keep cutting iPhone orders, services now ‘key differentiator’
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 2 years ago
I was off by an order of magnitude with respect to when it was coming, but I knew this was coming. You can't keep putting out products that are basically fully functional and don't really do anything new and expect people to keep buying new ones forever. For most people, it's probably been 10 years since a smartphone did something fundamentally different and special. The Android market has started to feel the pull, and some of the weaker competitors have left the market. It was inevitable that the same would happen to the Apple market.
Another thing that's happened to behind the scenes that I've started to notice is the way phone companies cell phones is fundamentally changed. It used to be that they were heavily subsidized and so you could get a phone that was top of the line basically for free. Over time this has changed so instead of subsidizing all phones, they might fully subsidize a very small number of inexpensive phones and have actual payment plans for the more expensive phones. At that point, your cell phone plan can become a lot less expensive if you're willing to compromise, and for most things that most people use their phones for it isn't really a compromise.
realcaseyrollins 2 years ago
I don't mind the incremental updates. It's nice to have slight upgrades every year, but Apple hypes them up as something incredible and grand.
They need to focus on one thing: durable, long-lasting premium phones. Make a $1,200, fully-featured iPhone that will last you ten, even five years.
But this I think is proof that the iPhone is dying, in part most likely because of their hiked prices post-making their retail prices the same as the unlocked prices. The cost of each phone is too high to justify getting a new one every year, even with revolutionary new features. What is easily justifiable is a LTS (Long Term Support) phone that costs an insane amount of money, because hey, you won't be getting a new one for several years right?
But IMHO the iPhone is dying, and they REALLY need to realize that their bread and butter in the future is going to be computers and services. Their competitive advantage when it comes to computers will continue to be so-so but they will absolutely SLAUGHTER Google when it comes to services. It could get to a point where their paid services are better than any of Google's.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 2 years ago
I don't mind incremental upgrades either, but their place as one of the largest companies on the planet requires that those incremental upgrades are also the must-have item so they can sell millions of them. I'm glad that if my phone broke today I can go out and buy something totally up to date instead of something 5 years old, but I hold onto phones for about 5 years minimum these days because they're just fine.
I'm sure that iPhone isn't dying, any more than PCs died when their market share plateaued and sales dwindled, or tablets when the same happened to those. It's just that they won't be an infinite growth market moving forward. Instead, they'll be manufacturing replacements so people looking for a newer phone can get one.
I think paid services may become the future. Advertising is shrinking, and there are major negative consequences to advertising including censorship and building materials that are bad but promote engagement so you can get more advertisers to pay for the bad stuff you make. Having a customer base, and a need to please that customer base, I think will beneficial in the long term because it'll make interference by bad actors more difficult. A small number of activists can shut down advertisers with a good campaign, but it takes a much bigger effort to try to unfairly change the way all kinds of customers think to the point that they'll stop paying for a thing they like.