Well, that was pretty clear. At least in part, pricing really IS an issue and I think a DED article today was implying China was performing well for Apple.
Looks like DEDvwill have to do an article about how Tim Cook is all wrong about how Apple is doing. It will have quotes from Cook going back years showing a history of lying about Apple.
I am holding off on a new iPhone and am sticking with my 6S Plus for a while longer due to Apple's higher prices. I'm sure I am not the only one...
Why not? Still works?? But if you cannot afford a new iPhone theres a lot of android alternative. Nobody is twisting your arm to buy a latest and the greatest
Nobody even mentions that Apple is still selling the iPhone 7, 8 and now again the X. If you don’t need the latest model, there are plenty of less-expensive models to choose from. People are focusing on the most-expensive Xs Max instead of the whole lineup. Yes the Xs Max is expensive - one reason I’m keeping my 8 Plus. But it’s not all there is.
It's ridiculous isn't it?
People complain about price and then quote the most expensive iPhone as an example.
The latest iPhone is $750.
When do people complain that Ford is too expensive and then continue to quote the $70,000 Shelby Mustang? Like they say, people have special rules for Apple.
Ya that claim keeps being made. However the piddly insultingly low 64GB of storage make that phone useless many. If you're replacing an older phone that cost less but had not storage and you're using it, that low end entry phone isn't going to cut it. That send to be Apple's strategy. Put devices with very low storage (and RAM on MacBooks) to try and bring people in. Then when they spec the machine they need is hundreds or thousands more.
Well XR seems to be doing fine.
64GB is plenty for a lot of people. I'm thinking of buying a 64GB XR myself.
Would you prefer XR start at 128GB and $799?
Like I said Apple can't win with the haters. I think a better strategy would have been a smaller screen size and lower price. But Apple is only gonna be 4 billion from breaking a new record so maybe Tim Cook is a better CEO than the rest of us?
You seem to think the extra storage costs Apple. It doesn't. The 64GB chip is a couple of dollars, the 128GB one is a couple of dollars more. Apple makes the money in making suckers pay an extra $100 for $4 of storage. It's a ripoff and people don't like it. Apple could sell the base model for the same price with 128GB storage, making it much better value and the customers would be much more willing to pay the price. It would likely increase sales, though Apple would no longer make the extra $96 for an upgrade to the next tier. And unfortunately all Cook can see is the loss of that $96, not the fact that it would ultimately result in more sales and more revenue.
One has to believe there are people at Apple doing the math on optimal prices and what changing the price +/- X number of $$ does to sales & revenues. I don’t know who is ultimately responsible for setting prices (is it Schiller’s team that makes the final call) but IMo they misjudged the market. Aside from the iPad announced in March every other hardware product Apple released this year went up in price. People might finally be saying no thanks.
That certainly would make sense from a maximum profitability point of view, but the issue with those types of calculations is it seeds resentment in customers, because they know it only really costs Apple a few dollars to double the storage size, and so they're seen to be nickel and dimeing people.
What pissed me off was in 2017 when the "new" Macbook Pro was released, Apple bumped the price of the old 2015 model by £400!
Hey I’m not defending the price increases. Just trying to understand what the logic might have been and how Apple execs became comfortable that raising prices wouldn’t impact sales. Somebody at Apple got that wrong.
Well, that was pretty clear. At least in part, pricing really IS an issue and I think a DED article today was implying China was performing well for Apple.
And yet nothing in Cook’s letter that specifically talks about price. The biggest blunder in the last couple years is the 23% increase in iPhone prices. Apple raised prices to offset declining unit growth and its come back to bite the company.
The longer term problem is not having something to takeover for the iPhone as the smartphone market matures. This is because no one can replace Jobs. Not only the lack of vision but also lighting a fire under Jony's butt and the recent quality problems and design inconsistencies show that Cook can't get the parts of the company to work together like Jobs did.
This press release specifically said all of the guidance shortfall is due to iPhone. There are no quality problems or design inconsistencies with iPhone.
So Trump's tariff war have now cost just one company, Apple, at least $5B in revenue for just this one quarter.
I think that is a f...ing copout. I know of no Tarrifs on Apple products. But Timmy being a putz may just motivate Trump to add Phones including iPhones to the Tariff list. vengeance is mine sayeth the Orange God.
Apple needs to come up with the "next thing" - it's been over 7 years since Jobs died and the only "new" thing was a watch. Tim should bring a tech visionary into the company if there isn't one there already.
Right because the “tech visionary” is just going to waive his or her magic wand and create the next big thing. Good grief.
Apple needs to come up with the "next thing" - it's been over 7 years since Jobs died and the only "new" thing was a watch. Tim should bring a tech visionary into the company if there isn't one there already.
Right because the “tech visionary” is just going to waive his or her magic wand and create the next big thing. Good grief.
Ha. Right. Do any of these haters even look around? Has ANY company come out with a truly visionary "next thing" product? No. Not even close. But Apple is held to some unique, ridiculous standard in their eyes. It's crazy.
So are all the people who shit on anybody here who speculated iPhone sales might be soft going to apologize now? It was patently obvious once Apple started heavily pushing the trade-in program and displaying cheaper prices on apple.com homepage that there was an issue with sales.
Plus Apple was giving steep Christmas discounts on the HomePod and Entry level iPad through the retail channel. It seemed like they were desperate for revenue. Of course probably won’t come with much profit.
Well, that was pretty clear. At least in part, pricing really IS an issue and I think a DED article today was implying China was performing well for Apple.
And yet nothing in Cook’s letter that specifically talks about price. The biggest blunder in the last couple years is the 23% increase in iPhone prices. Apple raised prices to offset declining unit growth and its come back to bite the company.
The longer term problem is not having something to takeover for the iPhone as the smartphone market matures. This is because no one can replace Jobs. Not only the lack of vision but also lighting a fire under Jony's butt and the recent quality problems and design inconsistencies show that Cook can't get the parts of the company to work together like Jobs did.
This press release specifically said all of the guidance shortfall is due to iPhone. There are no quality problems or design inconsistencies with iPhone.
And primarily is China. So, not sure it is a price issue. But hey the low hanging fruit narrative is always price.
Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie) 1/2/19, 5:24 PM IMHO, complaints about pricing, price points, home buttons, headphone jacks, batteries, upgrade cycles, etc. are all valid but are also all besides the point, which remains: Can Apple transition iPhone from growth driver to platform that enables more growth drivers? That’s it.
This is pretty spot on. Apple has hundreds of millions of iPhone customers. How do you get those people to buy more things? And what are those things? Clearly they aren't Macs. They are AirPods, however. And Apple Music subscriptions. Video is the logical next step.
As someone who has bought Apple products (and stock) for almost 40 years, I remember many long years where Apple sold 1 device for every 1000 the other guys sold. They struck silver with the iPod and then gold with the iPhone. The iPod appealed to all sorts of people. You didn't have to be a techie. Apple built a better mousetrap and the public responded. And then came the iPhone. Everyone needs a phone. Apple built a better phone and, again, the public responded. So what else has incredibly broad appeal and needs a better use experience? And is Apple even the company to deliver these days? I personally wish they'd focus more on home automation and deliver some killer first party products in that area. I also think they should get serious about audio, maybe buy Sonos. HomePod was a huge miss. I would have bought at least 6 for my house if it wasn't such a gimped product.
Agree 100%. And with a new video service coming maybe Apple should get into the TV business. I know TVs are a low margin business but it wouldn’t be about the TV so much as about tvOS and Apple’s video service. Every time I go into Best Buy the busiest part of the store is their TV section. I have a 4K TCL TV with Roku. I hardly ever fire up my Apple TV box. But if Apple sold a smart TV with tvOS and all the benefits of the Apple ecosystem I’d seriously think about getting one. And it wouldnt have to be outrageously priced because it would be all about getting Apple video service subs.
I completely agree on TV. Like you, I've also observed that the TV part of the store is always the busiest. I know there are many negatives when it comes to the TV business, but I think Apple could do for TV (hardware, as well as media distribution and discovery) what it did for portable audio and telephony.
Yes. Apple should totally be thinking about this. The market for smart TVs isn’t close to being saturated. And the easiest way to get people to sign up for your streaming tv service is to make it easy to access right from your TV set.
I remember paying $600.00 for the original iPhone, gladly. So paying $750.00 for an XR that is 1000 times better than that doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me. In 1998, during Apple’s second quarter, they posted a profit of a little over 50 million dollars. Now we’re crying because they are only earning 83 billion? Look back at history and gain some perspective.
One reason Cook listed for weak demand was cheaper battery replacement pricing. So is he admitting that the previous way of handling battery issues was intended to drive people to buy new phones?
That seems like an obvious conclusion. Apple was bricking their phones to push upgrades.
Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie) 1/2/19, 5:24 PM IMHO, complaints about pricing, price points, home buttons, headphone jacks, batteries, upgrade cycles, etc. are all valid but are also all besides the point, which remains: Can Apple transition iPhone from growth driver to platform that enables more growth drivers? That’s it.
This is pretty spot on. Apple has hundreds of millions of iPhone customers. How do you get those people to buy more things? And what are those things? Clearly they aren't Macs. They are AirPods, however. And Apple Music subscriptions. Video is the logical next step.
As someone who has bought Apple products (and stock) for almost 40 years, I remember many long years where Apple sold 1 device for every 1000 the other guys sold. They struck silver with the iPod and then gold with the iPhone. The iPod appealed to all sorts of people. You didn't have to be a techie. Apple built a better mousetrap and the public responded. And then came the iPhone. Everyone needs a phone. Apple built a better phone and, again, the public responded. So what else has incredibly broad appeal and needs a better use experience? And is Apple even the company to deliver these days? I personally wish they'd focus more on home automation and deliver some killer first party products in that area. I also think they should get serious about audio, maybe buy Sonos. HomePod was a huge miss. I would have bought at least 6 for my house if it wasn't such a gimped product.
Agree 100%. And with a new video service coming maybe Apple should get into the TV business. I know TVs are a low margin business but it wouldn’t be about the TV so much as about tvOS and Apple’s video service. Every time I go into Best Buy the busiest part of the store is their TV section. I have a 4K TCL TV with Roku. I hardly ever fire up my Apple TV box. But if Apple sold a smart TV with tvOS and all the benefits of the Apple ecosystem I’d seriously think about getting one. And it wouldnt have to be outrageously priced because it would be all about getting Apple video service subs.
That makes zero sense. Whats's the difference between your TV plus an AppleTV versus an Apple-built TV with a built-in AppleTV? Nothing.
What’s the difference? A better user experience. And not having to fork over additional dollars for a streaming media box and cable to connect to my TV. With one push of a button I can see all my streaming apps and easily launch Netflix, HBO, Amazon etc. What is the point of having dongles and boxes when it can all be built right into the TV?
Apple needs to come up with the "next thing" - it's been over 7 years since Jobs died and the only "new" thing was a watch. Tim should bring a tech visionary into the company if there isn't one there already.
Right because the “tech visionary” is just going to waive his or her magic wand and create the next big thing. Good grief.
Ha. Right. Do any of these haters even look around? Has ANY company come out with a truly visionary "next thing" product? No. Not even close. But Apple is held to some unique, ridiculous standard in their eyes. It's crazy.
No. The best one could come up with is voice assistants but even those are in their infancy.
One reason Cook listed for weak demand was cheaper battery replacement pricing. So is he admitting that the previous way of handling battery issues was intended to drive people to buy new phones?
That seems like an obvious conclusion. Apple was bricking their phones to push upgrades.
A little surprised that Cook would openly admit it. iPhone pricing this fall should be interesting.
rogifan_new said: Why would carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile be offering it for free with new activations?
fastasleep said: Because they're not giving it away for free? Maybe you misread but T-Mobile is giving away free 2-day shipping which isn't really the same thing, is it.
And this is why I have guys like Rogifan on “ignore”. Too bad because he had a FEW valuable things to share about Android. his obfuscation and exaggeration are too much to bare.
Except they are. Ignoring your customers is the best way to go rapidly downhill as a company, removing your head from your ass might help you see the problems Apple faces more clearly.
The last time Apple issued a warning on earnings was 2002. Obviously no longer giving out until sales data was a tell but I’m still a bit surprised they could be off with guidance by so much. Clearly Cook & Co. were taken by surprise with the soft demand.
I don’t think that people should surprised that Sales of the XS and XSMax were down from the Previous year similar to how the iphone6s were down from the iPhone6. But unlike the IPhone6 the X raised revenue by drastically increasing the price not the number of people buying the phone. Now there are few early adopters of the X wanting to upgrade.
I am holding off on a new iPhone and am sticking with my 6S Plus for a while longer due to Apple's higher prices. I'm sure I am not the only one...
Why not? Still works?? But if you cannot afford a new iPhone theres a lot of android alternative. Nobody is twisting your arm to buy a latest and the greatest
Nobody even mentions that Apple is still selling the iPhone 7, 8 and now again the X. If you don’t need the latest model, there are plenty of less-expensive models to choose from. People are focusing on the most-expensive Xs Max instead of the whole lineup. Yes the Xs Max is expensive - one reason I’m keeping my 8 Plus. But it’s not all there is.
It's ridiculous isn't it?
People complain about price and then quote the most expensive iPhone as an example.
The latest iPhone is $750.
When do people complain that Ford is too expensive and then continue to quote the $70,000 Shelby Mustang? Like they say, people have special rules for Apple.
Ya that claim keeps being made. However the piddly insultingly low 64GB of storage make that phone useless many. If you're replacing an older phone that cost less but had not storage and you're using it, that low end entry phone isn't going to cut it. That send to be Apple's strategy. Put devices with very low storage (and RAM on MacBooks) to try and bring people in. Then when they spec the machine they need is hundreds or thousands more.
Well XR seems to be doing fine.
64GB is plenty for a lot of people. I'm thinking of buying a 64GB XR myself.
Would you prefer XR start at 128GB and $799?
Like I said Apple can't win with the haters. I think a better strategy would have been a smaller screen size and lower price. But Apple is only gonna be 4 billion from breaking a new record so maybe Tim Cook is a better CEO than the rest of us?
You seem to think the extra storage costs Apple. It doesn't. The 64GB chip is a couple of dollars, the 128GB one is a couple of dollars more. Apple makes the money in making suckers pay an extra $100 for $4 of storage. It's a ripoff and people don't like it. Apple could sell the base model for the same price with 128GB storage, making it much better value and the customers would be much more willing to pay the price. It would likely increase sales, though Apple would no longer make the extra $96 for an upgrade to the next tier. And unfortunately all Cook can see is the loss of that $96, not the fact that it would ultimately result in more sales and more revenue.
One has to believe there are people at Apple doing the math on optimal prices and what changing the price +/- X number of $$ does to sales & revenues. I don’t know who is ultimately responsible for setting prices (is it Schiller’s team that makes the final call) but IMo they misjudged the market. Aside from the iPad announced in March every other hardware product Apple released this year went up in price. People might finally be saying no thanks.
That certainly would make sense from a maximum profitability point of view, but the issue with those types of calculations is it seeds resentment in customers, because they know it only really costs Apple a few dollars to double the storage size, and so they're seen to be nickel and dimeing people.
What pissed me off was in 2017 when the "new" Macbook Pro was released, Apple bumped the price of the old 2015 model by £400!
Hey I’m not defending the price increases. Just trying to understand what the logic might have been and how Apple execs became comfortable that raising prices wouldn’t impact sales. Somebody at Apple got that wrong.
I didn't mean to imply that you were, I know you're very much of the opinion Apple gear is too pricey. I agree completely that they got it quite wrong, as you've pointed out they've been pushing trade-ins hard and on the front page of Apple.com.
It's millions of haters/losers/idiots all over the world having a collective orgasm at hearing this news. Seems they can only be happy when there's bad news about Apple.
Truly. No one cares but if this news was about Samsung or Google you would be celebrating.
I refused to buy a 2018 iPhone due to pricing. Just as I refused the previous year's offerings.
When these last minute Apple promotions appeared, Apple got the sale but only by the skin of its teeth. I gave my reasons and millions of people probably share them. I definitely won't have orgasms over this news.
Sammy and Google would be celebrating if they sold this many premium phones.
This probably hurts Samsung. They made a killing on the OLED screens sold to Apple last year. Their financials will probably be down this year unless the new Camera sensor in the XR/XS/Max makes up for it
Google will be less affected by this as they don’t rely upon China for a big part of their profits.
1) Cook said to CNBC that over 100% of the difference in estimates from the guidelines and today is from China. That means that (World - China) revenues were better than Apple had expected. 2) At $84B, this will be Apple's second-highest quarter ever.
(also, came for idiotic "this wouldn't have happened if Jobs was in charge" takes, and wasn't disappointed.)
Comments
Right because the “tech visionary” is just going to waive his or her magic wand and create the next big thing. Good grief.
In 1998, during Apple’s second quarter, they posted a profit of a little over 50 million dollars. Now we’re crying because they are only earning 83 billion? Look back at history and gain some perspective.
That seems like an obvious conclusion. Apple was bricking their phones to push upgrades.
Google will be less affected by this as they don’t rely upon China for a big part of their profits.
1) Cook said to CNBC that over 100% of the difference in estimates from the guidelines and today is from China. That means that (World - China) revenues were better than Apple had expected.
2) At $84B, this will be Apple's second-highest quarter ever.
(also, came for idiotic "this wouldn't have happened if Jobs was in charge" takes, and wasn't disappointed.)