The Verge says: "Samsung’s disastrous battery issues have invalidated the praise we have heaped upon its beautifully designed, but fatally flawed smartphone. We leave this review up as testament to almost-was history, but have removed the score in light of the events. We do not recommend you purchase the Note 7, even if you're able to find it in stock."
'Beautifully designed.' Indeed.
how can top editors in the tech field still not get that design isn't just how something looks, but also how it works? bozos.
The Verge says: "Samsung’s disastrous battery issues have invalidated the praise we have heaped upon its beautifully designed, but fatally flawed smartphone. We leave this review up as testament to almost-was history, but have removed the score in light of the events. We do not recommend you purchase the Note 7, even if you're able to find it in stock."
'Beautifully designed.' Indeed.
how can top editors in the tech field still not get that design isn't just how something looks, but also how it works? bozos.
...And the material it is made from, how it feels in the hand, its balance, and how it is manufactured...
But these editors are nothing but modern day hucksters, shilling their articles to anyone and everyone
Sorry you only have 34 posts. And not worth my time. Come back when you have some experience and knowledge. For now go brush up your posting skills at the Verge.
That's really classy of you, sog35. Obviously English isn't my first language, and obviously I made some mistakes while typing. However, I think that any reasonable adult would understand that, compliment anyone that actually talks/understands/writes/tries in more than 1 language, specially on an US-based website, with everything that comes attached with it, namely people without proper education that don't actually believe that there are civilizations outside the US.
Anyway, looking at your post history, mom and daddy must be proud. Again, that was really classy.
Obviously you read my post. Obviously you don't have the ability to make a proper assessment and answer accordingly. Obviously your way is the irrational, fanboyism, trollish, way. You seem to have issues with the real world and real issues.
*Just saw some of your posts defending anemic iOS devices that can't actually handle 3 Safari tabs in memory; *Of course, you defend 700$ Smartphones that can't handle the Apple suit of Apps, 1 game, 20 songs and 20 photos and still update.
Samsung forever has Apple in their commercials. Always comparing themselves to Apple. This was inevitable. They don't focus on themselves, they focus on the competition. The commercial where everyone is gathered around a charging station at the airport with their iPhones immediately comes to mind. There are countless others. Lets see this flipped with everyone holding Notes around an airport power station. Wouldn't end well for them. Apple strictly focuses on Apple, making themselves better, so that commercial would never happen anyway.
What you're saying isn't true. Apple had a long-running campaign called 'Get a Mac'.
The whole point was comparing Macs to the PC competition. The most memorable lines were delivered by John Hodgman as 'PC'. Poking fun at the competition was the name of the game.
Apple has avoided this in marketing of the iPhone, and lately the Mac as well, but I wouldn't say Apple would NEVER pursue this type of ad again.
what he said is true. you're citing an ad campaign from years and years ago when apple was still an underdog. that was then, this is now. and what he said about apple stands.
Just waiting for the loser trolls to show up and say:
1. Don't celebrate. Failure of Samsung is bad for Apple, cause competition is good 2. Don't celebrate. Since this could have easily happened to Apple 3. Don't celebrate. Because some iPhones also exploded (ignoring that those phones were damaged and smashed) 4. Don't celebrate. Samsung had courage to do the 'right thing'
Ok trolls. Now don't waste your time responding. Since I already brought up all your talking points.
Look, Sog35: The iPhone is, by far, the best smartphone on the Market, as a standalone device. Once you are into the Apple ecosystem, it becomes eons ahead as a product.
Can we agree on that?
However, despite all of that, Apple is really one greedy company that will try to do everything they can to improve immediate profit, at the cost of user experience and at the cost of future profit. Do you want examples?
TN panels on MBAirs.
16 GB of base memory on iOS devices, until the 7.
1 GB of RAM on iOS devices, until the 6.
Non-SSDs on Macs, even ones costing thousands of dollars;
128 GB base SSD storage on rMBPs.
Selling the MBP.
Non-stereo audio when filming videos with an iPhone.
a8 chip on Apple TV4.
Worse camera hardware than pretty much all competition, and worse than the s7 after the iPhone 7.
All of those decisions, if made from other OEMs, would quickly burn down the company and their products even faster than this Note7 fiasco. Those decisions impact greatly the experience, and made all of those products pieces of garbage. It's disgusting. It's also not up for discussion that those things are actually true. They are. Imagine if Microsoft made a computer with a TN panel. Or without an SSD. Or if Samsung made a flagship with camera hardware as pathetic as the 6 series (6s included), or 1GB of RAM until 2014.
Yes, a 1GB iPhone would always be much better than an Android device with 1GB, as far as memory management goes. However, Apple could do even better if they actually offered users what they could offer. As such, regardless of your position and opinion, everybody know that we all have the thank Samsung, and Samsung only, for actually having devices with proper base storage, proper memory management, an awesome SoC, and good battery life.
What pisses me off even more is that Apple could easily have the best mobile camera (they have the best software and best SoC, after all), but they don't, because they wanted to count some beans instead of putting a sensor at least, as big as Samsung was able to do 1 year ago. But no, gotta cheap out and go the gimmicky way.
Just like without Apple we would all be using Nokias 3310 and Blackberries, without Samsung your iPhone would still have 8GB of storage and 256MB of ram.
If you are reasonable, if anyone here is, then we can all agree on that.
utter rubbish. non-stereo audio when recording video because greed? so clueless.
Just waiting for the loser trolls to show up and say:
1. Don't celebrate. Failure of Samsung is bad for Apple, cause competition is good 2. Don't celebrate. Since this could have easily happened to Apple 3. Don't celebrate. Because some iPhones also exploded (ignoring that those phones were damaged and smashed) 4. Don't celebrate. Samsung had courage to do the 'right thing'
Ok trolls. Now don't waste your time responding. Since I already brought up all your talking points.
Look, Sog35: The iPhone is, by far, the best smartphone on the Market, as a standalone device. Once you are into the Apple ecosystem, it becomes eons ahead as a product.
Can we agree on that?
However, despite all of that, Apple is really one greedy company that will try to do everything they can to improve immediate profit, at the cost of user experience and at the cost of future profit. Do you want examples?
TN panels on MBAirs.
16 GB of base memory on iOS devices, until the 7.
1 GB of RAM on iOS devices, until the 6.
Non-SSDs on Macs, even ones costing thousands of dollars;
128 GB base SSD storage on rMBPs.
Selling the MBP.
Non-stereo audio when filming videos with an iPhone.
a8 chip on Apple TV4.
Worse camera hardware than pretty much all competition, and worse than the s7 after the iPhone 7.
All of those decisions, if made from other OEMs, would quickly burn down the company and their products even faster than this Note7 fiasco. Those decisions impact greatly the experience, and made all of those products pieces of garbage. It's disgusting. It's also not up for discussion that those things are actually true. They are. Imagine if Microsoft made a computer with a TN panel. Or without an SSD. Or if Samsung made a flagship with camera hardware as pathetic as the 6 series (6s included), or 1GB of RAM until 2014.
Yes, a 1GB iPhone would always be much better than an Android device with 1GB, as far as memory management goes. However, Apple could do even better if they actually offered users what they could offer. As such, regardless of your position and opinion, everybody know that we all have the thank Samsung, and Samsung only, for actually having devices with proper base storage, proper memory management, an awesome SoC, and good battery life.
What pisses me off even more is that Apple could easily have the best mobile camera (they have the best software and best SoC, after all), but they don't, because they wanted to count some beans instead of putting a sensor at least, as big as Samsung was able to do 1 year ago. But no, gotta cheap out and go the gimmicky way.
Just like without Apple we would all be using Nokias 3310 and Blackberries, without Samsung your iPhone would still have 8GB of storage and 256MB of ram.
If you are reasonable, if anyone here is, then we can all agree on that.
Unlike Sog, I did read your post, and a couple of your earlier ones. I don't agree with what you're saying here, or on the invidious angle you take on Apple's tech vs. profit equation.
Start with their profit margin overall, which hovers around 39 percent year over year. In my opinion, that's not excessive for a company that's advancing consumer electronic technology on the broad front that they historically have, and a company which also has planetary ambitions for the indefinite future (think a century or more, like Daimler or IBM), as evidenced by the new "campus" they're building — an Earth hive for communications technology for the nexr century for sure.
Yet you wish to accuse them of nickle and diming us on their products. Where's the excess profit?
An example that answers your corrosive view: the Macbook Air won't get a redesign for just a display improvement. Apple never works that way. When IGZO-backed IPS panels become available in the required quantity, the processor and other internals developed to support them, the entire Air concept has to be redesigned and re-engineered. Or cancelled, and the tech shifted to to MacBook. No trivial updates till then; that's the conservative way Apple works.
All your other criticisms can be answered in a similar way. Apple is conservative for the sake of the demands of the integrity of the product, not excessive profits. In some cases, like with small iPhone displays until the 6/6S LTPS panels appeared, they're limited by supplier production capabilities, because they have to cover a demand for ~75 million per quarter upon launch.
When they staff the new headquarters fully for the next version of the enterprise, Apple 3.0, they may become more nimble. But never as nimble as Samsung, I think, or as careless.
Edit: I just looked at other posts that appeared while I was writing the above. Sog is being a jerk, which is his way at times. (Who isn't?) I found your original post well-written and a useful contribition, which is why I went to the effort to argue with it. Well done, even though I don't agree on the old "greed" model of Apple's ways.
A final point: the $200 billion that's in their cash reserve appears to support your view, but I maintain that they have, like I say, planetary ambitions, and they're not necessarily malevolent at all.
Just waiting for the loser trolls to show up and say:
1. Don't celebrate. Failure of Samsung is bad for Apple, cause competition is good 2. Don't celebrate. Since this could have easily happened to Apple 3. Don't celebrate. Because some iPhones also exploded (ignoring that those phones were damaged and smashed) 4. Don't celebrate. Samsung had courage to do the 'right thing'
Ok trolls. Now don't waste your time responding. Since I already brought up all your talking points.
Look, Sog35: The iPhone is, by far, the best smartphone on the Market, as a standalone device. Once you are into the Apple ecosystem, it becomes eons ahead as a product.
Can we agree on that?
However, despite all of that, Apple is really one greedy company that will try to do everything they can to improve immediate profit, at the cost of user experience and at the cost of future profit. Do you want examples?
TN panels on MBAirs.
16 GB of base memory on iOS devices, until the 7.
1 GB of RAM on iOS devices, until the 6.
Non-SSDs on Macs, even ones costing thousands of dollars;
128 GB base SSD storage on rMBPs.
Selling the MBP.
Non-stereo audio when filming videos with an iPhone.
a8 chip on Apple TV4.
Worse camera hardware than pretty much all competition, and worse than the s7 after the iPhone 7.
All of those decisions, if made from other OEMs, would quickly burn down the company and their products even faster than this Note7 fiasco. Those decisions impact greatly the experience, and made all of those products pieces of garbage. It's disgusting. It's also not up for discussion that those things are actually true. They are. Imagine if Microsoft made a computer with a TN panel. Or without an SSD. Or if Samsung made a flagship with camera hardware as pathetic as the 6 series (6s included), or 1GB of RAM until 2014.
Yes, a 1GB iPhone would always be much better than an Android device with 1GB, as far as memory management goes. However, Apple could do even better if they actually offered users what they could offer. As such, regardless of your position and opinion, everybody know that we all have the thank Samsung, and Samsung only, for actually having devices with proper base storage, proper memory management, an awesome SoC, and good battery life.
What pisses me off even more is that Apple could easily have the best mobile camera (they have the best software and best SoC, after all), but they don't, because they wanted to count some beans instead of putting a sensor at least, as big as Samsung was able to do 1 year ago. But no, gotta cheap out and go the gimmicky way.
Just like without Apple we would all be using Nokias 3310 and Blackberries, without Samsung your iPhone would still have 8GB of storage and 256MB of ram.
If you are reasonable, if anyone here is, then we can all agree on that.
Unlike Sog, I did read your post, and a couple of your earlier ones. I don't agree with what you're saying here, or on the invidious angle you take on Apple's tech vs. profit equation.
Start with their profit margin overall, which hovers around 39 percent year over year. In my opinion, that's not excessive for a company that's advancing consumer electronic technology on the broad front that they historically have, and a company which also has planetary ambitions for the indefinite future (think a century or more, like Daimler or IBM), as evidenced by the new "campus" they're building — an Earth hive for communications technology for the nexr century for sure.
Yet you wish to accuse them of nickle and diming us on their products. Where's the excess profit?
An example that answers your corrosive view: the Macbook Air won't get a redesign for just a display improvement. Apple never works that way. When IGZO-backed IPS panels become available in the required quantity, the processor and other internals developed to support them, the entire Air concept has to be redesigned and re-engineered. Or cancelled, and the tech shifted to to MacBook. No trivial updates till then; that's the conservative way Apple works.
All your other criticisms can be answered in a similar way. Apple is conservative for the sake of the demands of the integrity of the product, not excessive profits. In some cases, like with small iPhone displays until the 6/6S LTPS panels appeared, they're limited by supplier production capabilities, because they have to cover a demand for ~75 million per quarter upon launch.
When they staff the new headquarters fully for the next version of the enterprise, Apple 3.0, they may become more nimble. But never as nimble as Samsung, I think, or as careless.
Actually Apple's profit margin is only 25%
Which is lower than Microsoft and Google.
Interesting. Every quarter their earnings report is just under 40%. What am I missing?
Samsung are now suffering through the arrogance of it's chaebol. They clearly pushed ahead when everything pointed to a major problem. Interesting only 45,000 sold for the whole of Europe lets see the PR machine spin that. The problem now is if they don't so what the cause is the Galaxy will be shunned. Am interested about this quick charging. My mate showed me the back of his android phone ( not a note 7 ) and back was discolured from the charging. Is that normal for these phones ?
Unlike Sog, I did read your post, and a couple of your earlier ones. I don't agree with what you're saying here, or on the invidious angle you take on Apple's tech vs. profit equation.
Start with their profit margin overall, which hovers around 39 percent year over year. In my opinion, that's not excessive for a company that's advancing consumer electronic technology on the broad front that they historically have, and a company which also has planetary ambitions for the indefinite future (think a century or more, like Daimler or IBM), as evidenced by the new "campus" they're building — an Earth hive for communications technology for the nexr century for sure.
Yet you wish to accuse them of nickle and diming us on their products. Where's the excess profit?
An example that answers your corrosive view: the Macbook Air won't get a redesign for just a display improvement. Apple never works that way. When IGZO-backed IPS panels become available in the required quantity, the processor and other internals developed to support them, the entire Air concept has to be redesigned and re-engineered. Or cancelled, and the tech shifted to to MacBook. No trivial updates till then; that's the conservative way Apple works.
All your other criticisms can be answered in a similar way. Apple is conservative for the sake of the demands of the integrity of the product, not excessive profits. In some cases, like with small iPhone displays until the 6/6S LTPS panels appeared, they're limited by supplier production capabilities, because they have to cover a demand for ~75 million per quarter upon launch.
When they staff the new headquarters fully for the next version of the enterprise, Apple 3.0, they may become more nimble. But never as nimble as Samsung, I think, or as careless.
Edit: I just looked at other posts that appeared while I was writing the above. Sog is being a jerk, which is his way at times. (Who isn't?) I found your original post well-written and a useful contribition, which is why I went to the effort to argue with it. Well done, even though I don't agree on the old "greed" model of Apple's ways.
A final point: the $200 billion that's in their cash reserve appears to support your view, but I maintain that they have, like I say, planetary ambitions, and they're not necessarily malevolent at all.
Thanks for your post.
I know that profit margin is almost exclusively dependent of economies of scale and engineering decisions. Apple doesn't make Y profit in each iPhone sale. They might make that amount of profit if they sell X million devices. Due to my background, I obviously understand that having a lower bill of materials is also impacted by choices, great decisions, and talent. Talent doesn't translate into cost, talent translates to great products and healthy profit margins. So, devices being overpriced or not isn't necessarily related with profit-margins.
However, let me call BS on some of your points. There are some glaring decisions that Apple made because they knew that they could get away with it. Every single known Android OEM had better camera hardware than Apple since the last few years. Every, single, one. So it wasn't about scale. It wasn't about cost.
It was Apple thinking: "We have the best SoC and the best post-processing software. At expected sales, we can spend 2 more dollars per iPhone, have the absolute best camera and risk selling even more iPhones. Or we can use an inferior sensor, marry it with our superior SoC and software, and have good enough results, while profiting more, today."
The same can be said about the garbage that is the TN panel on the Macbook Air. There's no other company that has been selling TN panels on products above 500$. Since 2012. IPS panels are better on every metric, even power consumption, even thinner, and are available on pretty much any decent product. You could have a screen better than the one in a Air, on a 250$ Chromebook. 3 years ago.
What about the base storage (until recently) on iOS devices, that will keep biting them in the ass for many years to come? It's the only reason for Google Photos gaining so much traction on iOS, for example. It's also the reason why adoption rates aren't even bigger. 128GB SSDs on Macs? Non-SSD 2500$ iMac 5k?
If you see anything other than obvious greed at the expense of user experience, you have an issue. There's no other way. I'm not even talking about the fact that Steve and team used to say that user experience was the priority (see the last example), I'm talking about Apple having the most obvious, pathetic money grabs in the whole industry. And some users, love it.
Anyway, if one ignore the garbage that Apple sells, they have by far the best products, as well. (New A9 devices after iPhone 7 introduction, iPhone 7 line-up, iPad Pros, rMBP (when updated, at least the models with iGPUs are awesome value), riMacs with SSDs, and that's it. All best in class. The rest are nothing more than pathetic garbage.)
^^^ "Obvious pathetic money grabs" would lead to greater profit margins than they have.
In the case of the TN displays, that was the prevailing tech at the time, it fits the form of the Air, it still sells, and there are absolutely no engineering/design staff resources available for what would be a gratuitous update, short of a total redesign. Which is coming in one form or another as IGZO production increases, whether for LCD or OLED, and as Intel comes through with the processors.
As for the camera sensors, I would caution you to consider that the lead time for integrating with software and image processors means that their final product will always be a generation behind other companies' products, first because of the numeric scale at which Apple has to buy and plan production for, second because their software and processor integration is taken more seriously (and slowly) than by other companies — except for Samsung, which can be quicker, being a hustling Asian camera company themselves.
I can't answer your other points in detail, as this is exhausting my time. Except to say that there are two basic facts not in your favor: Apple's modest profit margin (see Sog above), and their consistently improving sales performance, allowing for the limitations of market macro headwinds, and allowing for the constraints of their chaotic physical plant in Cupertino, with consequent staff limitations — neither of which anyone ever considers in discussions of this kind.
Just waiting for the loser trolls to show up and say:
1. Don't celebrate. Failure of Samsung is bad for Apple, cause competition is good 2. Don't celebrate. Since this could have easily happened to Apple 3. Don't celebrate. Because some iPhones also exploded (ignoring that those phones were damaged and smashed) 4. Don't celebrate. Samsung had courage to do the 'right thing'
Ok trolls. Now don't waste your time responding. Since I already brought up all your talking points.
Look, Sog35: The iPhone is, by far, the best smartphone on the Market, as a standalone device. Once you are into the Apple ecosystem, it becomes eons ahead as a product.
Can we agree on that?
However, despite all of that, Apple is really one greedy company that will try to do everything they can to improve immediate profit, at the cost of user experience and at the cost of future profit. Do you want examples?
TN panels on MBAirs.
16 GB of base memory on iOS devices, until the 7.
1 GB of RAM on iOS devices, until the 6.
Non-SSDs on Macs, even ones costing thousands of dollars;
128 GB base SSD storage on rMBPs.
Selling the MBP.
Non-stereo audio when filming videos with an iPhone.
a8 chip on Apple TV4.
Worse camera hardware than pretty much all competition, and worse than the s7 after the iPhone 7.
All of those decisions, if made from other OEMs, would quickly burn down the company and their products even faster than this Note7 fiasco. Those decisions impact greatly the experience, and made all of those products pieces of garbage. It's disgusting. It's also not up for discussion that those things are actually true. They are. Imagine if Microsoft made a computer with a TN panel. Or without an SSD. Or if Samsung made a flagship with camera hardware as pathetic as the 6 series (6s included), or 1GB of RAM until 2014.
Yes, a 1GB iPhone would always be much better than an Android device with 1GB, as far as memory management goes. However, Apple could do even better if they actually offered users what they could offer. As such, regardless of your position and opinion, everybody know that we all have the thank Samsung, and Samsung only, for actually having devices with proper base storage, proper memory management, an awesome SoC, and good battery life.
What pisses me off even more is that Apple could easily have the best mobile camera (they have the best software and best SoC, after all), but they don't, because they wanted to count some beans instead of putting a sensor at least, as big as Samsung was able to do 1 year ago. But no, gotta cheap out and go the gimmicky way.
Just like without Apple we would all be using Nokias 3310 and Blackberries, without Samsung your iPhone would still have 8GB of storage and 256MB of ram.
If you are reasonable, if anyone here is, then we can all agree on that.
Unlike Sog, I did read your post, and a couple of your earlier ones. I don't agree with what you're saying here, or on the invidious angle you take on Apple's tech vs. profit equation.
Start with their profit margin overall, which hovers around 39 percent year over year. In my opinion, that's not excessive for a company that's advancing consumer electronic technology on the broad front that they historically have, and a company which also has planetary ambitions for the indefinite future (think a century or more, like Daimler or IBM), as evidenced by the new "campus" they're building — an Earth hive for communications technology for the nexr century for sure.
Yet you wish to accuse them of nickle and diming us on their products. Where's the excess profit?
An example that answers your corrosive view: the Macbook Air won't get a redesign for just a display improvement. Apple never works that way. When IGZO-backed IPS panels become available in the required quantity, the processor and other internals developed to support them, the entire Air concept has to be redesigned and re-engineered. Or cancelled, and the tech shifted to to MacBook. No trivial updates till then; that's the conservative way Apple works.
All your other criticisms can be answered in a similar way. Apple is conservative for the sake of the demands of the integrity of the product, not excessive profits. In some cases, like with small iPhone displays until the 6/6S LTPS panels appeared, they're limited by supplier production capabilities, because they have to cover a demand for ~75 million per quarter upon launch.
When they staff the new headquarters fully for the next version of the enterprise, Apple 3.0, they may become more nimble. But never as nimble as Samsung, I think, or as careless.
Actually Apple's profit margin is only 25%
Which is lower than Microsoft and Google.
Interesting. Every quarter their earnings report is just under 40%. What am I missing?
40% is gross profit margin. That does not include adminstrative costs, marketing costs, taxes, ect
25% is net margin. Basically the amount Apple keeps after all expenses are paid
It is very low. People who say Apple products are overpriced are idiots. Quality and great customer service cost money
ah another armchair-engineer, who believes he knows exactly what goes on in the labs and offices of apple, despite being absolutely nowhere near it. your statements are full of assumption and presumptions and void of any actual insight into the decision making process that goes into some of the most successful consumer goods on earth.
40% is gross profit margin. That does not include adminstrative costs, marketing costs, taxes, ect
25% is net margin. Basically the amount Apple keeps after all expenses are paid
It is very low. People who say Apple products are overpriced are idiots. Quality and great customer service cost money
Even if their net profit margin was 300%, it wouldn't mean there product is overpriced unless the price of the item was higher than the number of units they can produce. If the excessive, long-term, and YoY run on the iPhone has taught us anything about Apple is that they sell below their equilibrium price point, at least within a launch earnings quarter.
Because Apple's economies of scale are better due to their Hugh unit sales, their vertical and horizontal integration allows for reduced engineering costs, and mindshare which allows them to generate more revenue through less advertising, they would make more profit per unit others CE companies. This should be championed, not used in a weak attempt to tear down the company.
So if I believe Apple is selling below their equilibrium price, it would be foolish for them to leave money on the table, as it were. So what benefit does Apple get from making the iPhone less expensive than it should be? I think it comes back to the earning reports showing just how efficient Apple is run. They try to keep their margins at a certain rate. If they kept growing substanitally every quarter at some point there would be a legitimate issue with their margins affecting their mindshare. I think coming in below the equilibrium price and having the resultant scarcity when a most of their new product launches helps their bottom line in the long-term.
Here is part of the reason I do not 100% believe it was a battery issue. In the past when there is a battery issue, it usually hits more than one OEM, when dell had batter issue so did HP and IBM on laptops, why they tend to use the same supplier of batteries is if the manufacture of the battery is having issue like Samsung claimed then other phone companies would be see issue as well. It not unusually for the problem to exist across product the battery company makes. Also Samsung stated they use more than one battery manufacturer and the problem is showing up everywhere. Samsung has some sort of issue with their design of the pack and the charging system. It causing a defect in the pack.
40% is gross profit margin. That does not include adminstrative costs, marketing costs, taxes, ect
25% is net margin. Basically the amount Apple keeps after all expenses are paid
It is very low. People who say Apple products are overpriced are idiots. Quality and great customer service cost money
Even if their net profit margin was 300%, it wouldn't mean there product is overpriced unless the price of the item was higher than the number of units they can produce. If the excessive, long-term, and YoY run on the iPhone has taught us anything about Apple is that they sell below their equilibrium price point, at least within a launch earnings quarter.
Because Apple's economies of scale are better due to their Hugh unit sales, their vertical and horizontal integration allows for reduced engineering costs, and mindshare which allows them to generate more revenue through less advertising, they would make more profit per unit others CE companies. This should be championed, not used in a weak attempt to tear down the company.
So if I believe Apple is selling below their equilibrium price, it would be foolish for them to leave money on the table, as it were. So what benefit does Apple get from making the iPhone less expensive than it should be? I think it comes back to the earning reports showing just how efficient Apple is run. They try to keep their margins at a certain rate. If they kept growing substanitally every quarter at some point there would be a legitimate issue with their margins affecting their mindshare. I think coming in below the equilibrium price and having the resultant scarcity when a most of their new product launches helps their bottom line in the long-term.
I'm not saying otherwise. Re-read my post, please.
Your issue here is that, for some reason, they are making all the correct decisions, with the mentality of Blackberry fanboys. "Do you think you know better than people at Apple?"
Hmmm, Yes. Obviously, a lot of users and people outside bubbles can see things that people inside those bubbles can't. People in charge also know those things, but don't care because they know that they can get away with it, or profit from users like you.
When the iPhone was released, Blackberry and Nokia sales were growing. Do you think you know more than people managing companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars? Some stupid decisions are easy to spot. Some users emotionally invested are also easy to spot. Something tells me that if I dig into your post history, I would see you defend the 5s screen size, the 5s and 6 RAM, and maybe even base storage until the 7. And why is that? Because you and other users are emotionally involved, for some sad reason that I don't care about. I remember the 5s review, when Anand was saying that the 1GB of RAM on the A7 would quickly be a limiting factor, already.
Money grabs aren't necessarily related with profit margins. If Apple's margins were 95%, and if their product was better than the competition, due to their talent of all the people involved, their products wouldn't be overpriced. As it is, some of their products are disgusting garbage, and I don't see any other mainstream company dropping so low to actually sell similar products at those prices. TN panel on machines costing more than 1000$? It was insane, in 2012.
Comments
“Did you hear that the Galaxy Note 7 is now available in Black"
But these editors are nothing but modern day hucksters, shilling their articles to anyone and everyone
Anyway, looking at your post history, mom and daddy must be proud. Again, that was really classy.
Obviously you read my post. Obviously you don't have the ability to make a proper assessment and answer accordingly. Obviously your way is the irrational, fanboyism, trollish, way. You seem to have issues with the real world and real issues.
*Just saw some of your posts defending anemic iOS devices that can't actually handle 3 Safari tabs in memory;
*Of course, you defend 700$ Smartphones that can't handle the Apple suit of Apps, 1 game, 20 songs and 20 photos and still update.
As expected.
utter rubbish. non-stereo audio when recording video because greed? so clueless.
Start with their profit margin overall, which hovers around 39 percent year over year. In my opinion, that's not excessive for a company that's advancing consumer electronic technology on the broad front that they historically have, and a company which also has planetary ambitions for the indefinite future (think a century or more, like Daimler or IBM), as evidenced by the new "campus" they're building — an Earth hive for communications technology for the nexr century for sure.
Yet you wish to accuse them of nickle and diming us on their products. Where's the excess profit?
An example that answers your corrosive view: the Macbook Air won't get a redesign for just a display improvement. Apple never works that way. When IGZO-backed IPS panels become available in the required quantity, the processor and other internals developed to support them, the entire Air concept has to be redesigned and re-engineered. Or cancelled, and the tech shifted to to MacBook. No trivial updates till then; that's the conservative way Apple works.
All your other criticisms can be answered in a similar way. Apple is conservative for the sake of the demands of the integrity of the product, not excessive profits. In some cases, like with small iPhone displays until the 6/6S LTPS panels appeared, they're limited by supplier production capabilities, because they have to cover a demand for ~75 million per quarter upon launch.
When they staff the new headquarters fully for the next version of the enterprise, Apple 3.0, they may become more nimble. But never as nimble as Samsung, I think, or as careless.
Edit: I just looked at other posts that appeared while I was writing the above. Sog is being a jerk, which is his way at times. (Who isn't?) I found your original post well-written and a useful contribition, which is why I went to the effort to argue with it. Well done, even though I don't agree on the old "greed" model of Apple's ways.
A final point: the $200 billion that's in their cash reserve appears to support your view, but I maintain that they have, like I say, planetary ambitions, and they're not necessarily malevolent at all.
Shameless copy of Apples web pages, by the way.
I know that profit margin is almost exclusively dependent of economies of scale and engineering decisions. Apple doesn't make Y profit in each iPhone sale. They might make that amount of profit if they sell X million devices. Due to my background, I obviously understand that having a lower bill of materials is also impacted by choices, great decisions, and talent. Talent doesn't translate into cost, talent translates to great products and healthy profit margins. So, devices being overpriced or not isn't necessarily related with profit-margins.
However, let me call BS on some of your points. There are some glaring decisions that Apple made because they knew that they could get away with it. Every single known Android OEM had better camera hardware than Apple since the last few years. Every, single, one. So it wasn't about scale. It wasn't about cost.
It was Apple thinking: "We have the best SoC and the best post-processing software. At expected sales, we can spend 2 more dollars per iPhone, have the absolute best camera and risk selling even more iPhones. Or we can use an inferior sensor, marry it with our superior SoC and software, and have good enough results, while profiting more, today."
The same can be said about the garbage that is the TN panel on the Macbook Air. There's no other company that has been selling TN panels on products above 500$. Since 2012. IPS panels are better on every metric, even power consumption, even thinner, and are available on pretty much any decent product. You could have a screen better than the one in a Air, on a 250$ Chromebook. 3 years ago.
What about the base storage (until recently) on iOS devices, that will keep biting them in the ass for many years to come? It's the only reason for Google Photos gaining so much traction on iOS, for example. It's also the reason why adoption rates aren't even bigger. 128GB SSDs on Macs? Non-SSD 2500$ iMac 5k?
If you see anything other than obvious greed at the expense of user experience, you have an issue. There's no other way. I'm not even talking about the fact that Steve and team used to say that user experience was the priority (see the last example), I'm talking about Apple having the most obvious, pathetic money grabs in the whole industry. And some users, love it.
Anyway, if one ignore the garbage that Apple sells, they have by far the best products, as well. (New A9 devices after iPhone 7 introduction, iPhone 7 line-up, iPad Pros, rMBP (when updated, at least the models with iGPUs are awesome value), riMacs with SSDs, and that's it. All best in class. The rest are nothing more than pathetic garbage.)
In the case of the TN displays, that was the prevailing tech at the time, it fits the form of the Air, it still sells, and there are absolutely no engineering/design staff resources available for what would be a gratuitous update, short of a total redesign. Which is coming in one form or another as IGZO production increases, whether for LCD or OLED, and as Intel comes through with the processors.
As for the camera sensors, I would caution you to consider that the lead time for integrating with software and image processors means that their final product will always be a generation behind other companies' products, first because of the numeric scale at which Apple has to buy and plan production for, second because their software and processor integration is taken more seriously (and slowly) than by other companies — except for Samsung, which can be quicker, being a hustling Asian camera company themselves.
I can't answer your other points in detail, as this is exhausting my time. Except to say that there are two basic facts not in your favor: Apple's modest profit margin (see Sog above), and their consistently improving sales performance, allowing for the limitations of market macro headwinds, and allowing for the constraints of their chaotic physical plant in Cupertino, with consequent staff limitations — neither of which anyone ever considers in discussions of this kind.
Because Apple's economies of scale are better due to their Hugh unit sales, their vertical and horizontal integration allows for reduced engineering costs, and mindshare which allows them to generate more revenue through less advertising, they would make more profit per unit others CE companies. This should be championed, not used in a weak attempt to tear down the company.
So if I believe Apple is selling below their equilibrium price, it would be foolish for them to leave money on the table, as it were. So what benefit does Apple get from making the iPhone less expensive than it should be? I think it comes back to the earning reports showing just how efficient Apple is run. They try to keep their margins at a certain rate. If they kept growing substanitally every quarter at some point there would be a legitimate issue with their margins affecting their mindshare. I think coming in below the equilibrium price and having the resultant scarcity when a most of their new product launches helps their bottom line in the long-term.
Your issue here is that, for some reason, they are making all the correct decisions, with the mentality of Blackberry fanboys. "Do you think you know better than people at Apple?"
Hmmm, Yes. Obviously, a lot of users and people outside bubbles can see things that people inside those bubbles can't. People in charge also know those things, but don't care because they know that they can get away with it, or profit from users like you.
When the iPhone was released, Blackberry and Nokia sales were growing. Do you think you know more than people managing companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars? Some stupid decisions are easy to spot. Some users emotionally invested are also easy to spot. Something tells me that if I dig into your post history, I would see you defend the 5s screen size, the 5s and 6 RAM, and maybe even base storage until the 7. And why is that? Because you and other users are emotionally involved, for some sad reason that I don't care about. I remember the 5s review, when Anand was saying that the 1GB of RAM on the A7 would quickly be a limiting factor, already.
Money grabs aren't necessarily related with profit margins. If Apple's margins were 95%, and if their product was better than the competition, due to their talent of all the people involved, their products wouldn't be overpriced. As it is, some of their products are disgusting garbage, and I don't see any other mainstream company dropping so low to actually sell similar products at those prices. TN panel on machines costing more than 1000$? It was insane, in 2012.