Apple Talks Up High-End iPhones in Sign Ultra Model May Be Coming (bloomberg.com) 63
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, speaking on an earnings call that was mostly focused on holiday results, made an off-the-cuff remark that could be quite telling about the company's future. Cook was fielding a question about whether the iPhone's rising average sales price was sustainable. After all, a top-of-the-line model that cost $1,150 in 2017 (the iPhone X with 256 gigabytes of storage) now fetches $1,600 (the iPhone 14 Pro Max with 1 terabyte).
His response: The price increase is no problem. In fact, consumers could probably be persuaded to spend more. "I think people are willing to really stretch to get the best they can afford in that category," Cook said on the call, noting that the iPhone has become "integral" to people's lives. Consumers now use the device to make payments, control smart-home appliances, manage their health and store banking data, he said. While Cook wouldn't say if he anticipates further price increases, he made a good argument for why even more upscale iPhones could make sense -- especially if they deliver new features. Apple has internally discussed adding a higher-end iPhone to the top of its smartphone lineup.
His response: The price increase is no problem. In fact, consumers could probably be persuaded to spend more. "I think people are willing to really stretch to get the best they can afford in that category," Cook said on the call, noting that the iPhone has become "integral" to people's lives. Consumers now use the device to make payments, control smart-home appliances, manage their health and store banking data, he said. While Cook wouldn't say if he anticipates further price increases, he made a good argument for why even more upscale iPhones could make sense -- especially if they deliver new features. Apple has internally discussed adding a higher-end iPhone to the top of its smartphone lineup.
Shut up and deliver VR (Score:2)
Get me a VR headset with 8K per eye (over 65ppd.) I don't need stupid phone tweaks, not unless it's a foldable or they actually thought of something revolutionary beyond my conception.
Re: Shut up and deliver VR (Score:1)
Re: Shut up and deliver VR (Score:4, Insightful)
Not with foveated rendering. With foveated rendering, which only renders the area you're looking at in high resolution, you need less GPU than is required for even HD resolution rendering. If you don't believe me that only a small portion of the screen needs to be rendered properly, tell me whether you can read this entire sentence without moving your eyeball.
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Full disclosure: happy iPhone user.
Proving you're becoming a monopoly (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like a misstep by Cook to admit they're basically becoming a monopoly; this will come back to haunt them in the future.
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Apple has what, 30% of the phone market? Oh yeah total Monopoly.
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It's called a "duopoly" (along with Android).
Together they can keep prices high.
A duopoly (from Greek , duo "two" and , polein "to sell") is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market. It is the most commonly studied form of oligopoly due to its simplicity. Duopolies sell to consumers in a competitive market where the choice of an individual consumer can not affect the firm. The defining characteristic of both duopolies and oligopolies is that decisions made by sell
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It's not a market duopoly. Some manufacturer regularly sells a product that's far better value than most mainstream phones--OnePlus did this for years, but now the price has caught up to the quality.
How can you have a duopoly when more than ten companies are independently selling products and setting their own prices?
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I mean in another year some other brand will have low price and high value. There's always a market opportunity in this sector if a company thinks they can deliver that value. Though obviously it's hard--high quality requires a ton of testing, redesigns, probably broken schedules. Most Android smartphones I've seen didn't have UX up to my standards, with less than half succeeding despite my efforts to only buy good products. (I haven't tried an Apple mobile device in years, but they didn't either. Clunky sl
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Apple has what, 30% of the phone market? Oh yeah total Monopoly.
No and yes, and yes and no.
Crack open a dictionary and it should be obvious that Apple is not a textbook monopoly, given that they are not the exclusive seller of goods in any region in which they operate. iOS has roughly 10-20% of the global market, but monopolies are typically determined on a regional basis, so that number may not be too useful. On a regional basis, there are a few markets where it isn't uncommon for iOS to sit somewhere in the ballpark of 50% share (e.g. US, UK, Japan) depending on the c
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When looking at a whole picture, then global share matters.
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It's not a monopoly in the market, they just have a monopoly over customer's lives and attention spans.
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they're basically becoming a monopoly
22% market share is not a monopoly.
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Monopoly, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
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This is akin to Ferrari saying their cars are integral to peoples' lives as they need to go places.
At least there's a difference between Ferraris and ordinary cars.
(not $250,000 difference, but there is a difference)
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Consumers now use the device to make payments, control smart-home appliances, manage their health and store banking data,
I do that on my $150 Android phone. Your point is?
(I think his point is that his target market is "stupid people with too much money")
Squeeze it (Score:2)
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The problem is the naming. Pro and Pro Max already exist. What'll they call the new phone - Ultra (per TFS), Extreme, Extreme Pro Max Ultra? We're getting dangerously close to Windows naming schemes there...
Re:Squeeze it (Score:4, Interesting)
They have to keep revenue growing. They're scared of releasing anything much below the $400 mark. Having a phone at that price point might hurt their "premium" brand image, which is what keeps the whole enterprise viable. The same reason why Rolls-Royce will never release an $80,000 car, even though it would be a great car and their biggest seller.
Since the smartphone market isn't growing anymore, they can only expand revenue by wild price increases at the top-end. The segment who buy things because they're the most expensive.
Small captive audience (Score:3)
Who is buying all these "premium" phones with no revolutionary improvements? After they satisfy the itch of people who will just buy the newest iPhone "just because," then what?
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Who is buying all these "premium" phones with no revolutionary improvements? After they satisfy the itch of people who will just buy the newest iPhone "just because," then what?
"Free Upgrades" for Verizon, ATT users, etc, drive some of this stuff. Of course, they aren't really free, as these users are paying outrageous amounts of money per month for these accounts. But for others, yes, there's a contingent out there that has to have the latest Apple stuff, and they'll pay through the nose to show it off. The Cult of Mac was always a marketing phenomenon, and it transferred to the Cult of iPhone.
Me... I use the oldest one I can securely get by with. It does everything I need. And I
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Beats me, but some people are, given that foldable phones have been selling in the $1500-$2000 price range.
Now you could argue that being foldable is a "revolutionary improvement" so the comparison isn't really fair, but these phones tend to have worse overall specs because the foldable display takes up more of the overall phone's mass, meaning everything else has to be engineered around allowing the phone to fold.
And, in fact, those phones may be exactly what Tim Cook is referring to. He sees people droppi
Time Passes (Score:2)
Who is buying all these "premium" phones with no revolutionary improvements?
You may not consider them "revolutionary" but after you have had a phone for four years or more, buying a new phone gives you something that feels pretty darn impressive.
That's who is buying them, people who eventually upgrade from older phones. Or just need new ones for whatever reason.
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I buy used, 1 or 2 years old. I still get a big step up in hardware but with less of a price gouge, someone else can take the depreciation of new.
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I buy used, 1 or 2 years old.
Yeah see that is a great plan too, you are still getting some nice bumps whenever you get new phones, and re not that much behind in performance compared to the newer models.
If I didn't do iPhone development professionally where newest models are pretty useful for testing, I'd probably do that as well.
As it is I really should have last years model to test dynamic island stuff on hardware, but am waiting on new models this year...
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Most cell service plans include a trade in deal that basically lets you get a new phone for free every 3 years if you trade in the old one. That's what drives the majority of upgrades.
Yeah, the differences between one phone and the next model are small, but if you jump a couple years at a time the difference is pretty noticeable.
Re:Small captive audience (Score:4, Insightful)
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The phone isn't very useful without a service plan. The service costs the same whether I take up the offer for the "free" phone upgrades or not. Upgrading phones off the 3 year cycle costs significantly more, as you lose the bonuses. So yeah, the 3 year upgrade is free as far as most people are concerned..
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Us normal corporate drones too. My employer paid for my S22 Ultra so I can sit in my home office all day :)
Re: Small captive audience (Score:1)
Who is buying all these "premium" phones with no revolutionary improvements?
Women.
Both kinds.
4-product grid (Score:2)
All of which works... (Score:3)
"Consumers now use the device to make payments, control smart-home appliances, manage their health and store banking data"
And you can do all of that on an SE.
I don't doubt that people will pay more for the upscale model as a status symbol. But they're not doing it for their smart home.
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My thoughts exactly, all of the things listed there can be done on a phone costing a couple hundred bucks.
For the life of me I have no idea why anyone who values their money would ever buy a brand new flagship phone from Apple or Samsung with what they charge.
I still have a friend who has this driving need to own the newest smart phones meanwhile when things come up that require money (like say going out to have a few drinks) he's often a bit strapped for cash. Now he has a family and I don't so on one hand
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I was rocking an original iPhone X until a couple of months ago. I would still be using it perfectly happily, and it had 80% battery capacity. Then my son dropped it on the one place in the entire house with a hard floor and broke the screen. That will teach me...
It cost more to fix it than it was worth. Waited for the 14 announcement, and when it came out and I learned the new features were basically useless (perhaps more than useless in my case, I ski the bumps) I went and got a 13 the next day.
I'll likel
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overall, it's practically the same phone.
Yep.
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And you can do all of that on an SE.
And even on a [cough] cheap Android phone.
His target market is "easily parted from their money" though, so he has to say things like that.
Re: All of which works... (Score:1)
He is not saying that you have to spend that money for those features.. but that people would be willing to spend that kind of money BECAUSE they are using their phones literally constantly.. if you are always using a single device you are more likely to spend a few more bucks on it, so it feels solid with a great build quality and a thought through designs.. instead of some plastic toy which lags on every scroll..
Granted, there are marginal gains between a 500 and 1500 usd device nowadays.. but if you use
A terabyte of storage on a cloud connected device (Score:2)
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What do people put in it?
You know that the iPhone can shoot in ProRes, don't you? That takes an imperial f**ton of space.
As well, you know that cloud storage isn't free don't you? And some people may not want to store absolutely everything on their phone in the cloud?
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As long as there are people (Score:2)
...who take the most expensive iPhone and still put gold and diamonds on it, there's a market.
Give me back my SIM card slot (Score:3)
More fodder for Samsung (Score:4, Funny)
Just think of it as 1/50th of American Salary (Score:2)
Higherer end? (Score:2)
Integral to people's lives (Score:2)
If some people are willing to pay even more for top-model iPhones good for them. I won't be one of them
ooooohhhh! What colour is it? (Score:2)
to "get the best they can afford"??
Does it fold?? Oh. sorry that was another announcement about something that MIGHT happen... NEXT YEAR.
Could these announcements of POSSIBLE products that MIGHT come out at some unspecified time in the future, GET ANY MORE EXCITING !!! Woo wee!
Yea..nah (Score:2)
Apple's big mistake... (Score:1)
What? (Score:2)
Re "In fact, consumers could probably be persuaded to spend more" Tim Cook need to see what percentage of the average person's income the average iPhone is. Yes, these are premium, but still....
The lack of "high-end" smartphones is weird (Score:2)
Makes sense. There's certainly room for more differentiation between the "common" and "luxurious" ends of the smartphone market.
Look at cars: regular folk in the market for a new car (to the degree regular folk are buying new and not used) might pay ~$30k for a Toyota Camry. A Ferrari/Lambo/Rolls/Bentley will set back the ultra wealthy of the world an order of magnitude more. Compare to smartphones, where the $1000 iPhone Pro I use day-to-day is fundamentally the same device that Jeff Bezos uses (with th