People who preorder on the Internet are informed people, they know very well this is last year phone in a plastic case. Apple might have more success in stores when uninformed people will be told by the salesman that this is "the new iPhone" although it is not! Probably some uninformed people will give up a perfectly good iPhone 5 for the "new" iPhone 5c I think, in the end this is what Apple counts for with this iPhone 5c. Sell to people last year phone but tell them it's the "new iPhone"! Good strategy! Let's see how many will fall for this.
No. You're dead wrong. I agree with your assessment of the device but you are forgetting that people are generally idiots.
You are assuming that because logically the iPhone 5c is a sort of a con, that people will "think" about it and "decide" not to buy it.
This "thinking" and "deciding" really has very little to do with retail sales however. Ask anyone in the business.
Even if sales are low, all they have to do is put them at eye level in the front of the store or wherever a group of people are standing and they will sell anyway. This is almost the entire basis of chewing gum and mint sales for instance.
You are right, but you see, "idiots" can see "plastic"! They might say, "Great, look, the new iPhone, let's get one to show to my neighbor that now I have an iPhone just like him!" But after he touch it he might say: "Wait a minute, this does not look like my neighbor phone! This is plastic! My neighbor has a metallic phone! This must be some Chinese clone! I'm not buying!"
Of course it's way to early to tell but if Apple had replaced the 4S with this phone (in terms of slot, not necessarily specs) and still sold iPhone 5 (replacing slate with gray) for slightly cheaper it might have been better from a positioning standpoint.
I think that would have alleviated some of the angst against the 5C. If it were $200 less than the 5S it would have made more sense for some people, even here on AI. With the minimal price difference it's a hard sell. It's sad that the 5C apparently cost more than even the S4 in Europe according to alex101.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogifan
I'd love to know who was responsible for the branding/positioning of this phone? Schiller? Cook? As I said on a MR thread, Apple should have shaken things up this year. They should have gone with two models: iPhone and iPhone color. iPhone would be the premium device with premium specs, features and design. iPhone color would be the colorful cheaper sibling. The 4/4S would cease to exist and the would be no mention of iPhone 5 anywhere. This would do several things: one, It would get rid of the numbers in the naming conventions (like the iPad has done); two, keep the colored phone from being branded by the media as last years phone in a plastic case and three, not have people thinking the $100 cheaper iPhone 5 is being replaced with colored plastic.
The idea of the 5C is great. The 5C is a great phone. It's just from a branding/positioning standpoint it's not really working, especially with Apple keeping the 4S around and when announcing the 5C constantly referring to how it's just like the 5 (except it doesn't have the 5's premium design). By positioning the 5C in what would have been the 5's slot you've got some people thinking 'I could have gotten a 5, with its premium design for $100 cheaper, instead Apple is throwing colored plastic at me'. It very well may be the 5 is still very expensive to manufacture and reducing it $100 was out of the question. Going iPhone and iPhone color would have alleviated that problem.
I agree with this post.
The name 5C doesn't help Apple's cause. This would have been a good time to drop naming conventions, and just bring out 2 new phones with no prior baggage. By connecting the 5C to the 5 at the keynote, most of us are thinking "I would have rather had the 5 at the same price." It makes Apple look like a penny pinching marketing company and not an engineering tech company.
Either way $550 is too much unlocked for the 5C. Even if Apple decided to stick with $550 in the US, they should have been more aggressive on the price in Europe, where more people would probably buy an iPhone for the 1st time.
No matter what happens with the 5C, I think I'm always going to see the missed opportunities. Also waiting until next year to lower the price will be too little too late.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogifan
Why? It's not the new phone. Did we see those kinds of posts last year for the 4S? No.
People who preorder on the Internet are informed people, they know very well this is last year phone in a plastic case. Apple might have more success in stores when uninformed people will be told by the salesman that this is "the new iPhone" although it is not! Probably some uninformed people will give up a perfectly good iPhone 5 for the "new" iPhone 5c I think, in the end this is what Apple counts for with this iPhone 5c. Sell to people last year phone but tell them it's the "new iPhone"! Good strategy! Let's see how many will fall for this.
Does the Moto X or cheaper Lumia models have the latest and greatest specs?
FWIW the 5C is probably the phone my wife is getting once everything dies down. She's finally leaning towards ditching her 4 year old feature phone and for a somewhat silly reason since she's generally been happy with it and the dang thing runs for a week before it needs charging: She has to use another old company smartphone when running credit cards on Square.
The only other thing she'll probably use it for is quick recipe searches, but whatever. She never asks for much so fine with me. She has smaller hands and doesn't like larger phones, she likes the 5C green and her best friend is always telling her she needs to get an iPhone "'cause of all the stuff it does":)
Sell to people last year phone but tell them it's the "new iPhone"! Good strategy! Let's see how many will fall for this.
This whole 5C fiasco makes Apple look bad.
Question to everyone:
Would Steve have done something like this?
Yes that's a troll-ish question, but I'm serious. I feel if Steve were to make a "5C" he would start from the ground up to develop the best mid-tier phone he could. He would probably reimagine the whole product and not just throw last years phone in a plastic case and sell it for the same price it would normally be sold for.
The Mac Mini was completely different from the PowerMac, the iPod Mini/Nano were completely different from the iPod. Steve didn't just slap those respective products in cheaper enclosures and hoped to increase margins convincing people they were "new" products.
Ugh. I don't dislike the 5C. It looks great, but I'm not sure if the philosophy that brought us the 5C is the type that has driven Apple forward the past 2 decades.
The name 5C doesn't help Apple's cause. This would have been a good time to drop naming conventions, and just bring out 2 new phones with no prior baggage. By connecting the 5C to the 5 at the keynote, most of us are thinking "I would have rather had the 5 at the same price." It makes Apple look like a penny pinching marketing company and not an engineering tech company.
Either way $550 is too much unlocked for the 5C. Even if Apple decided to stick with $550 in the US, they should have been more aggressive on the price in Europe, where more people would probably buy an iPhone for the 1st time.
No matter what happens with the 5C, I think I'm always going to see the missed opportunities. Also waiting until next year to lower the price will be too little too late.
Yes that's where they failed. From a cost perspective they may not have been able to drop the 5 $100. So with the colored plastic phone don't reference the 5 at all and make it more affordable in certain markets. It's a good phone badly marketed and priced.
True. But I think the people that get up at midnight to order a new phone are die hards/techies who are more likely to go for the 5S. Perhaps they're doing preorders with the 5C to gauge what colors are popular so they know how best to stock retail.
Why? It's not the new phone. Did we see those kinds of posts last year for the 4S? No.
Uh!? 'Unapologetically plastic' is not new for the iPhone? 'Brilliant color' is not new? Cases with holes in it with 'colors in MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES' is not new? If none of these mattered, what was the point of the 5C!?
Moreover, if it's as you say, they should perhaps have waited until Sept 20 to intro the 5S first, and then put out the C. As of now, it just feeds the unfortunately trite meme (unwittingly, on your part too) of "meh, no innovation."
That's not my point. My point is Moto X isn't getting dinged for being a new phone without top of the line specs. I don't think the colored iPhone (that's what I'm calling it from now on) should get dinged for it either.
If you don't know why the iPhone is more expensive, you can be easily fooled by the - on paper - better specs of an Android device. Even then it begs the question if an iPhone really is worth the premium. I could buy the 16 GB S4, add a 32 GB microSD for my music and end up slightly above the 500€ mark while Apple wants 800€ for the 32 GB iPhone 5s (5c: 700€). It's hard to justify that difference, honestly.
there is no question all the iPhones are priced purely based on what Apple thinks people are willing to pay rather than a fair margin on top of the cost to manufacture. The problem with that approach is that people are wising up, there are alternatives out there now which are just as good and no body likes to be ripped off.
There is no possible way an 32GB iPhone 5c should cost $350 more than a 32GB iPod touch - radios, antennas and a proximity sensor don't cost that much. Really the 5c should cost the same, or less, than an iPad mini with cellular, but no Apple wants an additional $90.
If the base cost insult isn't enough, Apple still wants to charge the same amount for a small storage upgrade that they have done for many years now. They showed a nice graph in the presentation comparing processor performance over the years, no surprise they didn't put up one showing how much flash capacity/price has increased over the same time period
Uh!? 'Unapologetically plastic' is not new for the iPhone? 'Brilliant color' is not new? Cases with holes in it with 'colors in MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES' is not new? If none of these mattered, what was the point of the 5C!?
Moreover, if it's as you say, they should perhaps have waited until Sept 20 to intro the 5S first, and then put out the C. As of now, it just feeds the unfortunately trite meme (unwittingly, on your part too) of "meh, no innovation."
Have you not read any of my other posts in this thread? I think Apple botched this in many ways. Calling it the 5C instead of something simple like iPhone color. Constant references to the 5. Keeping the 4S around rather than making the iPhone color the lower price option. As I said before I don't think the phone is the problem. I think it's a great phone. The marketing, positioning and pricing is the problem. Get rid of the 4S and make iPhone color cheaper off contract.
Perhaps they're doing preorders with the 5C to gauge what colors are popular so they know how best to stock retail.
That would make sense.
I think Apple and carriers are banking on the blue model being popular. That's the one I see on all the carrier banners on their sites. Looks VERY nice too.
there is no question all the iPhones are priced purely based on what Apple thinks people are willing to pay rather than a fair margin on top of the cost to manufacture. The problem with that approach is that people are wising up, there are alternatives out there now which are just as good and no body likes to be ripped off.
There is no possible way an 32GB iPhone 5c should cost $350 more than a 32GB iPod touch - radios, antennas and a proximity sensor don't cost that much. Really the 5c should cost the same, or less, than an iPad mini with cellular, but no Apple wants an additional $90.
If the base cost insult isn't enough, Apple still wants to charge the same amount for a small storage upgrade that they have done for many years now. They showed a nice graph in the presentation comparing processor performance over the years, no surprise they didn't put up one showing how much flash capacity/price has increased over the same time period
Again, no one is expecting Apple to make smartphones for the low-end market. The pricing on the 5c is just off.
Then don't buy one. End of story.
I suspect that Apple knows just a little bit more about their costs and markets than you do. Your choice is simple - if something looks like a good deal to you, you buy it. If it doesn't look like a good deal, don't. Other than that, you don't have enough information to know what Apple should do.
You have WalMart and TMobile offering the 16GB 5C for $79. So you now get last year's model which is a great phone, but it has a colorful back for dirt cheap. And some people think it's not going to sell.
Comments
People who preorder on the Internet are informed people, they know very well this is last year phone in a plastic case. Apple might have more success in stores when uninformed people will be told by the salesman that this is "the new iPhone" although it is not! Probably some uninformed people will give up a perfectly good iPhone 5 for the "new" iPhone 5c
I think, in the end this is what Apple counts for with this iPhone 5c. Sell to people last year phone but tell them it's the "new iPhone"! Good strategy! Let's see how many will fall for this.
People want the new iPhone. They don't care what's inside.
Yeah, dumb people, obviously!
Enlighten us all: why isn't this phone new? Looks new to me:
No. You're dead wrong. I agree with your assessment of the device but you are forgetting that people are generally idiots.
You are assuming that because logically the iPhone 5c is a sort of a con, that people will "think" about it and "decide" not to buy it.
This "thinking" and "deciding" really has very little to do with retail sales however. Ask anyone in the business.
Even if sales are low, all they have to do is put them at eye level in the front of the store or wherever a group of people are standing and they will sell anyway. This is almost the entire basis of chewing gum and mint sales for instance.
You are right, but you see, "idiots" can see "plastic"! They might say, "Great, look, the new iPhone, let's get one to show to my neighbor that now I have an iPhone just like him!" But after he touch it he might say: "Wait a minute, this does not look like my neighbor phone! This is plastic! My neighbor has a metallic phone! This must be some Chinese clone! I'm not buying!"
Of course it's way to early to tell but if Apple had replaced the 4S with this phone (in terms of slot, not necessarily specs) and still sold iPhone 5 (replacing slate with gray) for slightly cheaper it might have been better from a positioning standpoint.
I think that would have alleviated some of the angst against the 5C. If it were $200 less than the 5S it would have made more sense for some people, even here on AI. With the minimal price difference it's a hard sell. It's sad that the 5C apparently cost more than even the S4 in Europe according to alex101.
I'd love to know who was responsible for the branding/positioning of this phone? Schiller? Cook? As I said on a MR thread, Apple should have shaken things up this year. They should have gone with two models: iPhone and iPhone color. iPhone would be the premium device with premium specs, features and design. iPhone color would be the colorful cheaper sibling. The 4/4S would cease to exist and the would be no mention of iPhone 5 anywhere. This would do several things: one, It would get rid of the numbers in the naming conventions (like the iPad has done); two, keep the colored phone from being branded by the media as last years phone in a plastic case and three, not have people thinking the $100 cheaper iPhone 5 is being replaced with colored plastic.
The idea of the 5C is great. The 5C is a great phone. It's just from a branding/positioning standpoint it's not really working, especially with Apple keeping the 4S around and when announcing the 5C constantly referring to how it's just like the 5 (except it doesn't have the 5's premium design). By positioning the 5C in what would have been the 5's slot you've got some people thinking 'I could have gotten a 5, with its premium design for $100 cheaper, instead Apple is throwing colored plastic at me'. It very well may be the 5 is still very expensive to manufacture and reducing it $100 was out of the question. Going iPhone and iPhone color would have alleviated that problem.
I agree with this post.
The name 5C doesn't help Apple's cause. This would have been a good time to drop naming conventions, and just bring out 2 new phones with no prior baggage. By connecting the 5C to the 5 at the keynote, most of us are thinking "I would have rather had the 5 at the same price." It makes Apple look like a penny pinching marketing company and not an engineering tech company.
Either way $550 is too much unlocked for the 5C. Even if Apple decided to stick with $550 in the US, they should have been more aggressive on the price in Europe, where more people would probably buy an iPhone for the 1st time.
No matter what happens with the 5C, I think I'm always going to see the missed opportunities. Also waiting until next year to lower the price will be too little too late.
Why? It's not the new phone. Did we see those kinds of posts last year for the 4S? No.
It's being marketed as a new phone...
Does the Moto X or cheaper Lumia models have the latest and greatest specs?
She has to use another old company smartphone when running credit cards on Square.
The only other thing she'll probably use it for is quick recipe searches, but whatever. She never asks for much so fine with me. She has smaller hands and doesn't like larger phones, she likes the 5C green and her best friend is always telling her she needs to get an iPhone "'cause of all the stuff it does":)
Sell to people last year phone but tell them it's the "new iPhone"! Good strategy! Let's see how many will fall for this.
This whole 5C fiasco makes Apple look bad.
Question to everyone:
Would Steve have done something like this?
Yes that's a troll-ish question, but I'm serious. I feel if Steve were to make a "5C" he would start from the ground up to develop the best mid-tier phone he could. He would probably reimagine the whole product and not just throw last years phone in a plastic case and sell it for the same price it would normally be sold for.
The Mac Mini was completely different from the PowerMac, the iPod Mini/Nano were completely different from the iPod. Steve didn't just slap those respective products in cheaper enclosures and hoped to increase margins convincing people they were "new" products.
Ugh. I don't dislike the 5C. It looks great, but I'm not sure if the philosophy that brought us the 5C is the type that has driven Apple forward the past 2 decades.
/rant
Does the Moto X or cheaper Lumia models have the latest and greatest specs?
And when was Apple Motorola or Nokia...
Yes that's where they failed. From a cost perspective they may not have been able to drop the 5 $100. So with the colored plastic phone don't reference the 5 at all and make it more affordable in certain markets. It's a good phone badly marketed and priced.
True. But I think the people that get up at midnight to order a new phone are die hards/techies who are more likely to go for the 5S. Perhaps they're doing preorders with the 5C to gauge what colors are popular so they know how best to stock retail.
Uh!? 'Unapologetically plastic' is not new for the iPhone? 'Brilliant color' is not new? Cases with holes in it with 'colors in MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES' is not new? If none of these mattered, what was the point of the 5C!?
Moreover, if it's as you say, they should perhaps have waited until Sept 20 to intro the 5S first, and then put out the C. As of now, it just feeds the unfortunately trite meme (unwittingly, on your part too) of "meh, no innovation."
If you don't know why the iPhone is more expensive, you can be easily fooled by the - on paper - better specs of an Android device. Even then it begs the question if an iPhone really is worth the premium. I could buy the 16 GB S4, add a 32 GB microSD for my music and end up slightly above the 500€ mark while Apple wants 800€ for the 32 GB iPhone 5s (5c: 700€). It's hard to justify that difference, honestly.
there is no question all the iPhones are priced purely based on what Apple thinks people are willing to pay rather than a fair margin on top of the cost to manufacture. The problem with that approach is that people are wising up, there are alternatives out there now which are just as good and no body likes to be ripped off.
There is no possible way an 32GB iPhone 5c should cost $350 more than a 32GB iPod touch - radios, antennas and a proximity sensor don't cost that much. Really the 5c should cost the same, or less, than an iPad mini with cellular, but no Apple wants an additional $90.
If the base cost insult isn't enough, Apple still wants to charge the same amount for a small storage upgrade that they have done for many years now. They showed a nice graph in the presentation comparing processor performance over the years, no surprise they didn't put up one showing how much flash capacity/price has increased over the same time period
Perhaps they're doing preorders with the 5C to gauge what colors are popular so they know how best to stock retail.
That would make sense.
I think Apple and carriers are banking on the blue model being popular. That's the one I see on all the carrier banners on their sites. Looks VERY nice too.
there is no question all the iPhones are priced purely based on what Apple thinks people are willing to pay rather than a fair margin on top of the cost to manufacture. The problem with that approach is that people are wising up, there are alternatives out there now which are just as good and no body likes to be ripped off.
There is no possible way an 32GB iPhone 5c should cost $350 more than a 32GB iPod touch - radios, antennas and a proximity sensor don't cost that much. Really the 5c should cost the same, or less, than an iPad mini with cellular, but no Apple wants an additional $90.
If the base cost insult isn't enough, Apple still wants to charge the same amount for a small storage upgrade that they have done for many years now. They showed a nice graph in the presentation comparing processor performance over the years, no surprise they didn't put up one showing how much flash capacity/price has increased over the same time period
Please explain a "fair margin".
No idea; straight from Wikipedia and yes, looks silly.
Then don't buy one. End of story.
I suspect that Apple knows just a little bit more about their costs and markets than you do. Your choice is simple - if something looks like a good deal to you, you buy it. If it doesn't look like a good deal, don't. Other than that, you don't have enough information to know what Apple should do.
/blank stare/