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Businesses Iphone The Almighty Buck Apple Technology

Did Apple Retail Prices Get Too High in 2018? Consumers Say Yes. (usatoday.com) 296

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Apple has for years been a premium brand that rarely, if ever discounted products. Every year, the company could raise prices on products, and consumers would not only happily pay, but stand in long lines for the privilege of doing so. From a report: So when Apple started putting misleading, but seemingly consumer-friendly posters in front of Apple Stores at the end of 2018 offering a new iPhone model for $300 off (with trade-in of your current phone), you know something different happened for the company this year. Consumers fought back. Many analysts have reported that in the wake of poorer-than-expected sales for this year's crop of iPhones, Apple cut back on production, including on the $1,100 iPhone XS Max, the $999 iPhone XS and the XR, the "budget" model that replaced the previous entry-level new phone, the $349 SE. The price for the XR (the one Apple is hawking discounts for): $749.

"This should be a wakeup call for Apple," says Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. "They swung, and they really missed." The prices on the new phones are "far too high," says Terry Walton, a tourist from Auckland, New Zealand. He has an iPhone 7 and didn't even consider any of the X-series iPhones because it still works just fine. Upgrading "didn't enter my mind at all," he says. It wasn't just iPhones that got price hikes. Apple also upped the cost of the top-of-the-line iPad to $1,000 as well (or over $2,800 for a loaded model) and added $300 to the cost of the Mac Mini and new MacBook Air computers.
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Did Apple Retail Prices Get Too High in 2018? Consumers Say Yes. More

Did Apple Retail Prices Get Too High in 2018? Consumers Say Yes.

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  • Inferior product (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31, 2018 @10:18AM (#57883576)

    At the prices they charge, I would expect a superior product and build quality.
    You can take your $2800 loaded iPad and bend it [youtube.com] easily with your hands, among other flaws. I wouldn't even expect that from a $100 tablet.
    Glad people are starting to wake up to Apple's price gouging and downward slide in quality.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Were Apple products ever that great? Sure they had some good ones, but they have also been having design defects since at least the 90s when I started paying attention.

      Most of it seems to stem from lack of proper testing, which I can only put down to their insistence on extreme secrecy for new products. Stuff lie the bending (again), antenna problems, dodgy hinges, thermal issues, flakey keyboards...

  • And Worse (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bigbutt ( 65939 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @10:26AM (#57883602) Homepage Journal

    The problems are becoming aggravating enough that I'm reviewing my options for the next upgrade.

    My music library doesn't completely load. I have playlists that show all the songs but when you click to play, it grays out as unavailable. If I plug the phone or tablet in and sync, it'll sync up a couple of thousand different songs but other songs will then gray out. This is with about 50G of "free space" per iTunes.

    The spacebar issue. For some reason, in more recent versions of IOS, I keep missing the spacebar and have posts with concatenated words. I don't know why it's doing it all of a sudden but it's damned annoying.

    The music thing pisses me off the most though. Go through the trouble to create a playlist, go to listen to music during my commute and half the songs are missing.

    [John]

    • And still no custom launcher, or widgets on the home screen.

    • Re:And Worse (Score:5, Informative)

      by denguydj ( 1326685 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @12:14PM (#57884140)
      I know this sounds weird but try changing the name of the phone. It worked for me and it fixed the Bluetooth stuttering I was having. No idea why in hell why the name of the phone would effect music play back, its beyond me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wwphx ( 225607 )
      My problem is with Notes and Contacts. I won't be able to find a note on my phone, but it'll still be on my iMac, so I'll update it there and it'll automagically reappear on my phone. And don't get me started on contacts! Major PITB with my Christmas card list this year! They need an option where I can declare 'This device is the master, push it out to all my other devices'. Music works OK for me, it's the Podcast app that's the biggest pain in my experience, but it's also the one that I use the most.
    • ITunes is its own particular brand of junk, among Apple products. I remember around 2006/7, when the classic iPods still at least had build quality going for them, I won one in a contest... Feature-wise, my Rio Karma ca. 2003 blew it out of the water, but the scroll wheel snapped off after too many drops onto the concrete. So I decided to keep the iPod. But in no way could I abide by iTunes. Its grabby insistence on moving and altering any file you loaded into it filled me with dread, even after (hopefully)

  • If people are paying the price why will it go down (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @10:30AM (#57883612)

    There is a big selection of Android phones from the Low End cheap sub $100 phones to the high end phones that are a fraction of a dollar less then what Apple sells, which are arguably just as nice or for some people much better.
    However people are still paying more of the Apple phones. So why would lower its prices until it really has too.

    Apple rarely gets suckered to the race to the bottom game, even it costs them market share.
    Here is how the race to the bottom game works.
    Company A offers a product at a high price.
    Company B offers a similar product at a lower Price (often with some minor quality issues that is barely noticed).
    Company A offers a product at a lower cost then B, however to meet the cost they have to cut its quality down.
    Company B then goes makes an even crappier product to compete against A. ...
    What we end up with is 2 products that no one really wants to buy because they are so poor.

    We have seen this with Gateway 2000. Back in the mid 1990's gateway actually sold quality custom built PC's they were more expensive, but people gladly paid for them because they used good components. Then by the late 1990's they were competing against the lower end system to dominate the market, and end up with system that were Crap. In which Dell took over.

    Apples approach is to maximize profit, not market share, if they can do both great, but they will error on the side of profit. So when company B makes a lower cost competitor Apple then tries to make a much better unit and charge more for it.

    Now did they hit the limit? This article says yes, but we will see. Consumers always say the prices are too high.

    • Re:If people are paying the price why will it go d (Score:5, Informative)

      by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @10:58AM (#57883730) Homepage

      Apple rarely gets suckered to the race to the bottom game, even it costs them market share.

      They had a pretty large share of the market. Simply not raising their prices and being a familiar OS would have let them hold that market for a long time. A small number of high margin devices is their old business model. They had moved to moderate margin and a huge number of units is what they've been doing ever since the runaway success of the iPhone. Their real problem is that their older phones are still good enough and they should have always expected sales to slow to the replacement level once they owned the market.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Apples approach is to maximize profit, not market share, if they can do both great, but they will error on the side of profit.

      They'll certainly error on the side of profit margin, but that's not what brought Apple to be one of the world's most profitable companies. The iPod/iPhone/iPad was by no means cheap, but it could sell to a normal middle class market like BMW to use a car analogy. Now I feel like Apple is retreating back into Ferrari market, sure there has been and will be a market for luxury sports cars but it's not huge. That Apple is taking away the low-end options like the SE and the small Mini is a clear sign they were

      • The problem is there are getting too many competitors in the middle class market. Where it use to be just Samsung, we have Google, Ericson, LG... All jumping into that market too.

  • No motivation to upgrade (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Brian Kendig ( 1959 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @10:31AM (#57883616)

    I'm an iOS developer and a longtime Apple fan, but I'm having trouble finding a reason to upgrade from my iPhone 6S (even though Apple's offering me $200 in trade-in value for it).

    Honestly, the lack of a headphone jack is a big thing for me. I listen to music all day at the office with my iPhone and an expensive set of headphones. It's a simple use case. No reason why I should have to bother with dongles or batteries.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gnasher719 ( 869701 )

      I'm an iOS developer and a longtime Apple fan, but I'm having trouble finding a reason to upgrade from my iPhone 6S (even though Apple's offering me $200 in trade-in value for it).

      I think you mean that as a critique, but really that's the best recommendation you could make for buying Apple products.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zlives ( 2009072 )

        but not for upgrading as apple would like us to...
        also still doesn't justifies the cost markup.

    • Agreed. I was more than happy with my iPhone 5c. Except the battery was only about 50% available.

      Now I have an iPhone SE which continually has problems with Podcasts. (Something which oddly enough always occurs when a model is about to be orphaned.)

    • though I now suspect that was due to a failing battery. Her 8 I'm gonna make her get a new battery for when the time comes :).

    • Consider that Samsung still has the headphone jack in their flagship phone, and the fact that the Android UI manages to be more consistent and usable than iOS (the back button is in the same place!) they may have just shot themselves in the foot.

      I went with LG because not only does it have the headphone jack, it still has removable storage (in addition to wireless charging). Currently sitting with 32+128GB of space. I probably won't need to upgrade again for another 2 years (and likely would still go for

      • I bought a Redmi Note 4 for $179 to learn Android on because it was compatible with LineageOS. I've thought about making it my everyday phone, because I'd much rather subject a $179 phone to daily wear-and-tear than something three (or more) times as expensive.

        The only thing that's stopped me is that I don't see an easy solution for syncing my contacts, music, and other data from macOS to an Android phone (especially as I don't use Google services). If there's an app that'll sync the data for me, please poi

  • It had to stop somewhere (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @10:33AM (#57883622) Homepage

    Their sales start dropping and they simply start increasing prices to keep increasing profits. Their beyond-reason loyal fanbase enabled that for a while, but this is getting ridiculous, goes against any logic so could not possibly be sustained for long.
    They have to be careful - I mean their 30% cut on all content makes a big chunk of their revenue (second only to the aforementioned ridiculously marked-up iphones), not offering an affordable way to hook people into that revenue stream will have severe long-term consequences. Other companies would give away hardware at cost for the chance of hooking people into that 30% content revenue deal, but Apple is trying to sell $300 worth of hardware for over $1000 based only on their name and gimmick-level innovations, in the anti-capitalist notion of increasing income simply by increasing prices.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      Their beyond-reason loyal fanbase enabled that for a while, but this is getting ridiculous, goes against any logic so could not possibly be sustained for long.

      So the fan base is unreasonable, but their prices are beyond reason, so their beyond-reason fanbase is now rebelling against the unreasonable price increases. Right.

      in the anti-capitalist notion of increasing income simply by increasing prices.

      You can charge whatever you want for your product in a free market economy, but that doesn't mean anyone will buy it. People will buy it if they think it provides value to them. You're free to do your own cost benefit analysis. There isn't even a requirement to own one of these things. Everyone got along just fine before smart phones.

    • I mean, Apple had record profits in 2018. Maybe they moved fewer units than stock analysts wanted them to. But they made more revenue than ever (+16%) and more profit than ever (+30%). Lowering the number of units sold, and raising the profit per unit, is something that's useful a good portion of the time.

      Further, their share of smartphones is growing with respect to Android. So their 30% commission isn't in danger.

      But this stupid article quotes stock market analysts and a random tourist. No evidence t

      • Further, their share of smartphones is growing with respect to Android. So their 30% commission isn't in danger.

        But this stupid article quotes stock market analysts and a random tourist. No evidence that Apple is messing up. Just opinions unconnected to data, and instead the analysts are just comparing to some ideal that they imagine.

        Where did you get this data? A quick search on Google shows a different story. In the US, Apple has a larger market share than each of the individual competitors, but not when you combine the Android manufacturers. In fact, Apple's market share slipped this last quarter by 1%. In the Global market, Apple is in third place. In regards to Phone activations in the US Apple has remained steady or declined a bit.

        The only place where Apple made gains is in China where they increased their market share by 5%

        • I didn't look through all your links, but I clicked on the first one. It shows Apple going from 43% in the US (year end, 2016) to 44.3%(year ends, 2018) in the US. That's a 1.3% improvement.

          This is similar enough to the numbers I recall, which I saw when I read that Apple has moved from the 3rd largest smartphone manufacturer to 2nd (after Samsung).

      • Further, their share of smartphones is growing with respect to Android. So their 30% commission isn't in danger.

        Well:

        https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

        Does not look like that...

    • > Their sales start dropping and they simply start increasing prices to keep increasing profits.

      Ahh yes, the cable company model, as they respond to a declining subscriber base.

  • Longtime fan, about to get off the train (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I've been a long time Apple fan. Switched everything over to Macs in the early 2000's.

    Currently, I have an 11 year old Mac Pro I'm using and a 2007 iMac. Was hoping to upgrade the iMac before Christmas. But new ones didn't show.

    The Mac Pro drives me crazy. Every time I start Word, it yells at me to upgrade my OS. I can't upgrade my OS. I have to get a new machine. The current Mac Pro is garbage. The new Mac Pro probably will be as well. And supremely over priced.

    I don't mind spending a ton of money

    • While I still use an iPhone (Mostly due to the trusted Apps I have installed and integration with work) and have an Apple TV (Mostly due to the fact that I have an iPhone). I got off the Mac Platform back in 2012.
      Basically by that time the writing was on the wall that Apple really didn't care much for the Mac Platform and was going to the iOS direction. I do most of my programming for Web Based Applications, not device particular apps. There really wasn't much special about the Mac Platform, that I couldn

    • Re:Longtime fan, about to get off the train (Score:4, Informative)

      by gnasher719 ( 869701 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @11:25AM (#57883892)

      The Mac Pro drives me crazy. Every time I start Word, it yells at me to upgrade my OS. I can't upgrade my OS. I have to get a new machine. The current Mac Pro is garbage. The new Mac Pro probably will be as well. And supremely over priced.

      You have an 11 year old Mac Pro, and you are complaining that it didn't last? Seriously?

      If you are using an 11 year old Mac Pro, then you don't need a new one. A midrange iMac will make you sooo happy.

      • A midrange iMac will make you sooo happy.

        A midrange Mac will cost you as much as a high-end PC while offering less functionality. I'm currently running a Core i7-4790K, a CPU launched in 2014 and discontinued in 2017. I picked up the CPU on eBay for $50. My prior CPU was a Core i5-2500K -- released in 2011 -- which is still running in my daughter's PC.

        Apple makes its margin on its premium products, therefore their "midrange" products are more akin to low-end PC components. Apple has no incentive to offer you anything in the "value" segment as

    • I've been a long time Apple fan. ...

      Even longer fan. Had an Apple //e back when it was new. Apple's been down this road before, and almost went out of business because they (1) thought they had the best products and ignored the competition, (2) assumed they could charge customers whatever they wanted, and (3) had the slowest upgrade cycle in the industry. I see a lot of parallels between Apple today under Tim Cook and Apple in the post- pre- Steve Jobs era and they're making the same false assumptions. I suspect the people at the top have the

    • Then don't buy a mac pro.. I'm ready to get my worn out USB-C ports replaced for a second time, with a laptop going on 2 years old. Also my keyboard had to be replaced. Once I got paranoid about blowing the keyboard out pretty much every time I use it, the keyboard seems ok.... but it's still an Albatross around my neck because i might blow it out, only to have it fail a month after the Applecare is over.

  • They're killing themselves (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @10:43AM (#57883658) Journal

    In their grand hunt for more profits, Apple is killing the golden goose. The blunder of the latest iPhone rollouts, their continued irrelevance of their iPad/Book/Pro lines with similarly high prices and underperformance, combined with their entire abandonment of anything desktop related, Apple will, unless there is a huge shakeup, fade back into the backwaters of computing history.

    While there will always be people gullible enough to shell out $1,000 for a phone which plays music, the inflection point of people waking up to the reality of how much money they're wasting on phones is coming due. With only incremental "improvements", justifying exorbitant costs for meager gains will and is starting to come into play.

    At this point, there isn't a good justification to buy an Apple phone other than its supposed exclusivity and for its fanboys. There isn't even a reason to buy their overpriced laptops which require multiple adapters to get it to work.

    Apple needs to get its act together, and soon. The goose is getting long in the tooth and its ability to continue laying golden eggs is becoming doubtful. There is a huge market for people who are tired of Microsoft's crap, yet Apple seems vowed and determined to ignore those tens of millions of potential customers, all because they can make a few bucks now on a phone.

  • mac pro 2019 starting at $5999 with a high base that people really don't need.

  • XS biting back (Score:5, Funny)

    by OneHundredAndTen ( 1523865 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @10:47AM (#57883682)
    When you call a product excess, many customers are going to get a message that you did not intend to send.

  • There was a theme in 1950s science fiction about degraded societies who could use technology but after a disaster could no longer manufacture or even properly understand it. This is how I look at Apple today. I look at the two Mac Pro 5,1s in front of me right now and see no replacement for them, and no replacement for them on the horizon.

    There's not even a hint of embarrassment about it. Saying you want pro level workstations is like talking a foreign language in the Apple world. Look, a laptop with an E-G

  • This has all happened before (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @11:06AM (#57883764)

    This basically is starting to remind me of the cycle Apple went through back in the late 80's to early 90's. Back then Apples were seen as very high quality and the easiest most user friendly computers to own. They costed a lot, but if you had the money it was the way to go.

    PCs kept getting built better though, and Windows started becoming a viable work GUI in the 90's after the 3.0 release. Eventually even if you preferred Apple it made little sense when a PC that worked just as good was 1/3 to 1/2 the cost. Even now after the company's rebound their traditional computer market share is a mere fraction of standard PC's.

    Now, the same thing is happening with phones. For a long time Apple was the clear winner if you wanted a phone that "just worked". You paid a little extra but it was great. Now though, Android devices have pretty much caught up completely in hardware and software, while still being priced less. If you want a dirt cheap phone sure there are the sub-$100 options out there, but even at the premium level you can go Android and save a few hundred dollars vs Apple.

    Particularly without Jobs at the helm, I see Apple's market share as continuing to drop within the next couple years. In a decade I'd wager Apple's marketshare on the phone market will be at or below 15%.

    • Pretty much. My iPhone 4 was about a hundred times better than the Android that preceded it, but it got replaced by an Android. Because the Android OS and apps are now good enough, and the hardware is a fraction of what Apple charges. Just not worth it for me to stay on the Apple train.

      The Macbook Air used to be a somewhat reasonably-priced machine, now it's almost as much as a Pro. I still like my old Air, but if MS can just figure out how to do virtual desktops right, it will be my last Mac.
    • Apple's share of the phone market has been below 15% for several years [statista.com]. There are quarters where it blips above (coincides with new iPhone releases), but the average has been below 15%. You probably didn't notice because the media seems extremely reluctant to publish negative news about Apple products. I still remember when iPad market share slipped below 50%, the only mention I found was buried two thirds of the way through a market analysis report.

      It's primarily the English-speaking countries (U.S.,

  • Since I hate phoning I went for an iPad mini instead, a tablet instead of a phablet.
    Much bigger screen and much cheaper for people like me who use only messengers, imessages, whatsapp and facetime.

  • Seen quite a few people peeved at headphone jack i (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Monday December 31, 2018 @11:13AM (#57883808) Journal

    It's just a totally unnecessary change. It's clearly not about space at all.

    I'm not paying more for a device fractionally faster, without a convenient thumb unlock or headphone jack.

    And yes. I've owned 4 of the last top end iPads in a row. I'm done.

  • Price Gouging (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @11:20AM (#57883850)
    One of the most outrageous parts of Apple's pricing strategy can be found in the way that they differentiate between models in the same range that differ only based on storage capacity.

    For example, consider the new (no Home button) iPad. In the UK, there are 4 models offered in the range:-

    64Gb - £769
    256Gb - £919
    512Gb - £1,119
    1Tb - £1,519

    Yes, that's £1,519 or approximately £1950 for the *starting point* in price for a 1Tb iPad. Now, on the one hand, if you really want a terabyte tablet, expect to pay for that. On the other hand, look at the difference in price between the 512Gb and 1Tb versions - no less than £400.

    However, if you go to say Amazon and check the price of a 512Gb Samsung 970 Pro M2 PCI Express SSD (close to if not the fastest-performing drive at that capacity), you'll pay £176.78 for a boxed, retail part.

    In other words, Apple (a company that bought a memory/storage manufacturing business and which manufactures a significant portion of the RAM they use in-house) are charging comfortably more than twice as much for RAM packaged in one of their products (i.e. with the addition of one or two more chips on a standard circuit board) than a company offering a stand-alone, retail part.

    The reason they're doing this is because they can. However, there's a slim chance that, as the markets saturate and as Chump's trade practices continue to bite, Apple will be left with a choice between cutting prices or slashing profits.

    And/or we can just move to a different vendor or significantly reduce the replacement cycle of existing Apple kit.

    • Bought the new 11” iPad on Saturday, and went with 512GB for just that reason— the premium to go with more storage than I could envision a use for was just too high. But, 512GB gives me plenty for now. I had budgeted for a new Mac as well, but decided to hold off for now and see what happens.

      My only real complaint so far (beyond needing to restore music from iCloud) is the need to buy a new set of chargers and cables that support USB-C. Really makes a streamlined travel setup a pain in the ass.

      • On Black Friday there were sales on the previous generation 10.5" iPad Pro. Picked up the 512GB version and exceedingly happy with it so far. I think the offer (at Best Buy) was $200 off of list price.

        You get relatively great deals if you live off of the edge. And, frankly, this iPad was the best available up until a few months ago. Why wouldn't I be happy with it.

  • Here's the reality: Apple hasn't increased any iPhone prices whatsoever.

    The cheapest models are gone. The iPhone 7 to iPhone 8s+ have all become cheaper, without exception. The iPhone X has been replaced with an improved model for the same price. And there are two new models, one at a top end price, one considerably lower.

    The highest prices are all for storage options that were not available before.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      That's like saying Dodge really hasn't increased prices at all. Just you can expect to pay the same price as a Vyper for every car!

  • So far increased prices have kept revenues up as sales have declined. That train is now running out of steam.

    I have a 6 year old MacBook Pro that needs to be upgraded. There's nothing available from Apple that I can buy. I do consulting work that requires me to be able to remove the SSD. I can't do that with any current Apple models, although competitors like Dell seem perfectly capable of offering removable storage.

    Ditto for my aging Mac Pro. What is there to replace it with? The latest Mac Mini refr

    • Just get a usb-c thumb drive for sensitive data, and if there is a data security policy on the internal ssd, just wipe the drive when you leave.

      And for what it is worth, if you want a high performance desktop, the new mini is actually a pretty good value if you upgrade the RAM yourself and use a NAS for bulk storage.

    • There's nothing available from Apple that I can buy. I do consulting work that requires me to be able to remove the SSD.

      That's a problem that you share with how many people? And I suppose you are paid well for your consulting work, so you can easily afford to buy a new MacBook for it, do your consulting work, let them wipe the hard drive, and sell it on eBay. Then you add the money you lost to the bill.

  • Maybe this is the cost of having "courage".

  • Latest phones aren't what I want. (Score:3)

    by Clomer ( 644284 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @11:55AM (#57884038)
    Here's my 2 cents, FWIW.

    I have a 5S that I bought when it was the top-of-the-line flagship iPhone. It's served me really well.

    Every time a new model has been released, I have evaluated whether it was worth the cost of upgrading given the amount of improvement I would see. With the 6 and 7 series, the only real difference in terms of how I would use it would be the addition of Apple Pay. The technical performance isn't enough better to be worth the price tag (at least to me) and Apple Pay isn't available in the stores that I would use it most if it were an option. So, those are out.

    I have no real interest in the X because I don't want FaceID. Let me stick with using my thumb with TouchID. I might have considered the 8, but the loss of the headphones port (something I use often) represents a loss in functionality in a very real way. In other words, for me the 8 is actually a downgrade from the 5s for my use case.

    Aside from that, I prefer the form factor of the 5s. I know that the SE would be an upgrade, but it's a case of not being a big enough upgrade to justify the price tag (plus they don't even make those anymore).

    As it stands right now, the 5s still runs the latest iOS. I don't know how much longer that will continue, but as long as it does I see no reason to upgrade, and some compelling reasons to stay where I am. I'm not sure what I'll do when the 5s gets obsoleted. I'm hoping for an updated SE that still has a headphone port, but I'm not holding my breath. It's going to be a tough decision.
    • Yeah FaceID just seems like a bad idea. Fingerprint readers work fine.

    • I'm not sure what I'll do when the 5s gets obsoleted. I'm hoping for an updated SE that still has a headphone port, but I'm not holding my breath. It's going to be a tough decision.

      I'm on an IPhone 6, it meets my needs just fine. If it fails I will look for a replacement on Ebay.
      A 128GB 6S goes for about $250.

  • There are also some who aren't upgrading due to the lack of an audio port on all the new models. The iPhone 6 and 6s models still work fine, and "upgrading" to refurbished ones is preferable for many to switching to something that'll require a handful of extra clunky connectors just to interface with one's car.

  • Consumers fought back.

    That strikes as me as an odd way to describe declining sales. Consumers can choose not to buy something without being in a battle with the supplier. The current products don't (in the consumers' estimation) offer a good value proposition for them. They aren't fighting with Apple. They're just acting in their own self interest. That's what we expected, right?

  • So Much Negativity (Score:3)

    by PhYrE2k2 ( 806396 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @01:06PM (#57884414)

    So much negativity in these comments.
    * Apple made an incremental upgrade to their phones which offered little new over the prior generation which was well purchased (the X and 8/8Plus)
    * at a time when the overall phone purchasing market shrunk due to saturation
    * at a time when consumer debt is the highest and consumer spending is on a decline due to uncertainty (partly created by media)

    They saw the same decline everyone else did this year, but had a fantastic last-year. They also sold a ton of Apple Watches, iPads, iPad Pros. and iMacs.

    • You conveniently forgot the price. For the incremental upgrade you don't expect that other distinctly nastier change they added.

      So much negativity actually reflects consumer sentiment on this on the whole and is the entire point of TFA.

  • "He has an iPhone 7 and didn't even consider any of the X-series iPhones because it still works just fine."

    Well, that's the problem right there. Apple should do something about that.

  • All this talk of Apple having sales issues has been nonsense in the past and it is nonsense still.

    We'll see the truth of the matter in the next earnings report.

    The XR is a really nice phone, I would have upgraded to that myself if the X I got last year had not been holding up so well...

    It also seems strange to me fact that Apple themselves have stated they are seeking longer upgrade cycles, so if that is happening it's pretty much expected.

  • They're just pricing in the fact that very few people will upgrade from X and XS phones in the next 4 years. Moore's law is over on mobile now, too, and there are few bells and whistles remaining that they could conceivably add to make an upgrade worthwhile. A triple camera (as opposed to double) ain't gonna cut it. Speed is good enough as is (up to 3x the fastest Android phone in benchmarks). I think we might see iPhone go to a bi-yearly update cycle at some point as well as an even more aggressive push fo

  • Wow (Score:3)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Monday December 31, 2018 @04:26PM (#57885372) Homepage

    So much Apple-love on Slashdot. I wonder what you all do for a living?

    Personally, I have never, and probably will never, buy an Apple product. Because of the pricing, yes, but also because I've never found a single redeeming feature in any Apple product.

    I manage *thousands* of the damn things, phones, Macs and iPads. But I honestly wouldn't ever buy one or use one myself. My "work" iPad sits doing CCTV all day (and falls over with alarming regularity - there is obviously no application controls and one program sucking up RAM can easily cause it to fall over and "restart" the entire iPad once every 24 hours at least. It also can't manage four simultaneous H264 HD-level streams as it runs out of RAM on the fourth and kills the app).

    I finally convinced my employers to stop using them for anything when I proved that they're not compliant with UK consumer, company or data protection laws. By literally failing to get them to acknowledge a letter of complaint to their head office (Ireland), and then them refusing to do ANYTHING - even reply to questions requesting statutory complaint / data retention information. I strongly suspect that they are not GDPR compliant, as they weren't ever DPA compliant. They make noises to suggest such, but they have never given a statement to that effect, and refuse when asked.

    (And that's because iCloud is nothing more than AWS, Azure etc. cloud instances in random regions... The Register published an article on it earlier this year).

    I haven't found a single redeeming feature in any product, service, or business process that they use. Those people who have rejected my concerns have - to a person - gone back on their assertions that Apple are "so wonderful" within a matter of months, after whatever-I-predicted happened.

    Honestly... what do you use Apple for that you couldn't use anyone else for, and do so cheaper?

  • These predictions based on the supply chain come out every year, and they've been wrong every year. It would be too late to cut orders for the XR or XS; what Apple is probably doing is cutting supply for next year's phones from certain suppliers for various reasons. Maybe the supplier didnâ(TM)t live up to expectations or the prices were too high. Apple's supply chain works a long way in advance.

    It may be that all this is true, just don't take it for granted that it is. Like Apple or hate them, making

  • Considering 99% of consumers will never get close to maxing out the processor speed (no, I'm not talking about people on /. or tech blogs), any processor within the last few years is "fast enough". Consumers are stupid, per se. Just look at the price of a pickup truck or SUV. 60-100k? MOST smartphones, including the iPhones, have build costs of around 200-400 dollars, minus marketing & advertising, but "command" $1,000-1500 bucks? I read somewhere that the markup on iPhones is around 60% from cost.

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