Hope this rumour is not true. Apple should assume that every iPhone is sold to a first time buyer and ensure that it just works. That means having a charger and a cable. They can make an argument for the EarPods, but I think it should be included as well.
If the charger and EarPods are optional, it will become like a fast food sale - "Would you like some fries with that? Small, medium or large? How about a Pepsi?"
I have no problem eliminating the earbuds or charger as long as the standard options are free BTO options alongside the non-free BTO options for those who need them.
Also, for a truly reduced environmental impact, Apple could easily eliminate the retail packaging altogether and use simple, sealed flat pack packaging for in-Apple Retail Store sales.
It's a mindset change and thankfully new generations are more aware of packaging issues and the impact of the environment.
Offering a stripped down product and calling it a "price reduction"?
Disappointing.... Very Disappointing....
Apple has been screwing its customers for several years now offering cheap, 5W chargers with phones capable of several times that.
But now, instead of correcting their error, they tell consumers that, after spending a grand or so on a new phone, that they need to buy their own charger if they want their shiny new expensive phone to work? Really?
Disappointing.... Very Disappointing....
Apple has a long history of cutting back and eliminating things -- but there was always an offsetting benefit. The only benefit here will be Apple's bottom line.
I’d like to see Apple include gallium nitride chargers. I don’t need the EarPods... mine have sat in the drawer in the original packaging since I bought my phone 4 years ago. It would be cool if apple gave a discount if you bought a new iPhone and AirPods at the same time, but highly doubt that will ever happen.
The copycats have already started. Tesla says it will sell all new Model Y with no tires to give customers the freedom to choose whatever specialty tire they want and to help save on the expense of doing business. What next?
Next time you go through a drive through order a Coke with no cup
Hope this rumour is not true. Apple should assume that every iPhone is sold to a first time buyer and ensure that it just works. That means having a charger and a cable. They can make an argument for the EarPods, but I think it should be included as well.
If the charger and EarPods are optional, it will become like a fast food sale - "Would you like some fries with that? Small, medium or large? How about a Pepsi?"
Taking that approach just leads to lots of waste and not having the new cable, charger if you need it. Don't agree they should be using this as a cost saving to cover mmWave of all things but I'd think there has to be a more efficient wayof providing to those who need the accessories without the waste.
It would seem like something Apple could use local partners for and get shipping and tax savings to pay for other things.
Hope this rumour is not true. Apple should assume that every iPhone is sold to a first time buyer and ensure that it just works. That means having a charger and a cable. They can make an argument for the EarPods, but I think it should be included as well.
If the charger and EarPods are optional, it will become like a fast food sale - "Would you like some fries with that? Small, medium or large? How about a Pepsi?"
Why would they assume something that conflicts with the hard data they have on every iPhone purchaser?
If they ship without the extra stuff in the box, they’ll have vouchers for those that need the extras.
Apple has the individual level data on this. The aggregate data says that a significant number of iPhone buyers, probably a majority by far, are return customers. Many of those do not need another charger and cable to throw in the junk drawer. The money saved by not manufacturing and shipping all those unneeded bricks and wires will more than offset the cost of providing them as extras for the much smaller number of people who need or even want them.
Whether a return or new customer, many will probably be very pleased to have options like a discount to upgrade to AirPods, rather than having another wired pair to toss in the drawer and full-price to get to the wireless upgrade. Same goes with the charging gear. Having the basics in the box (again) creates waste and actually disincentivizes decisions to upgrade to, say, a wireless charging pad. Making it all optional does the opposite. If handled right, this won’t be a bad PR nightmare, it’ll be yet another thing that makes Apple customers happy and leaves Samsung, et al wondering why they’re wasting money packing unwanted junk in phone boxes, until they manage to follow suit next year.
Apple products, iPhones and otherwise, are premium products and should come complete with a premium charger and EarPods. What trillion valuation does Apple need to achieve to ‘offset’ the cost anything let alone 5G? Got too many chargers and EarPods kicking around? Feel free to donate them away or give them to your local Apple Store so you can feel good about helping Apple ‘offset’ their costs. If Apple starts selling cars, will the Gen 2+ models be sold without wheels or chargers since you can just transfer your Gen 1 components over? I think it’s just a greedy way to appear more environmentally conscious.
This kind of makes sense. Most of us have too many headphones and power adapters laying around. For those that don't this is a good way for 3rd party sellers to gain a leg up.
Yeah except using a 3rd party charger may void your warranty.
You realize that The Belkin charging mat on your nightstand, the HP desktop at work and your car are all 3rd party chargers, right? Part of the problem is it’s impossible to know which chargers are well made and which aren’t. They all look exactly the same, and price isn’t a guarantee, either.
I totally agree with the others - Apple is a trillion dollar company with record profits and the highest profit margins in the industry. The fact that they only included a woefully inadequate 5W charger before was already inexcusable.
If they are using 5G costs as an excuse, that’s doubly inexcusable. Every other company that sells a 5G phone includes a charger, why can’t Apple? For most people a charger is currently more useful than 5G anyway. As far as costs go, the charger manufacturing costs are trivial and the design costs have long since been amortized.
If they wanted to save space then give people the option - let them buy the phone with or without a charger, or give a discount code when selling the phone towards accessories at the Apple Store. People would be happy and they would have more sales - win, win.
This kind of makes sense. Most of us have too many headphones and power adapters laying around. For those that don't this is a good way for 3rd party sellers to gain a leg up.
Yeah except using a 3rd party charger may void your warranty.
No it won't.
It's illegal for Apple to void your warranty just because you used a 3rd party component. It doesn't matter if that's a charger or a replacement screen.
Apple products, iPhones and otherwise, are premium products and should come complete with a premium charger and EarPods. What trillion valuation does Apple need to achieve to ‘offset’ the cost anything let alone 5G? Got too many chargers and EarPods kicking around? Feel free to donate them away or give them to your local Apple Store so you can feel good about helping Apple ‘offset’ their costs. If Apple starts selling cars, will the Gen 2+ models be sold without wheels or chargers since you can just transfer your Gen 1 components over? I think it’s just a greedy way to appear more environmentally conscious.
This is a baffling misunderstanding of how business works. Tesla already sells electric cars, and a fast charger for your garage is not included with your $120,000 car. You’re going to buy one of those, but if you trade in your Tesla in a few years for an upgrade, you’re not going to want another fast charger for your garage, and they’re still not going to include one with your new car. There are already a lot of USB-charged electronic devices that don’t ship with a brick in the box right now. Most people already have a handful of the things in a drawer somewhere.
Despite marketing that says otherwise, no part of anything that you buy comes “free.” The earbuds, chargers, cables, stickers, instructions, box and bag are all included in the price you pay for an iPhone. Everything inside and including the shrink-wrap is charged to you at the full unit cost, plus a markup. Anything moved outside the shrink-wrap could be considered at a pro-rated cost through the use of a voucher. Because not everyone wants one of those luxuriously thick Apple Store bags or a printed copy of the receipt, those things are factored into the price at a prorated amount. If 62% of customers leave the Apple Store with their iPhone in a bag, then everyone who buys an iPhone pays for .62 times the unit cost for the bag (This is a simplification, as the bags’ cost is prorated across everything sold in the store).
So the point is, if chargers and cables are moved outside of the shrink-wrap, the math changes. Whether it’s because of 5G or something else, chances are pretty good that the unit cost of an assembled iPhone 12 is more than the unit cost of last year’s model. To address that, Apple is either going to raise the price, reduce the profit margin, cut the cost of something else inside the shrink-wrap, or some combination of all three (though reducing the profit margin isn’t something they will do for long if they intend to stay in business). Moving the charger, cable, and/or wired buds outside the shrink-wrap cuts the unit cost of the device. It also cuts overall manufacturing costs because Apple knows that demand for those things is significantly less than 1:1 to the demand for new iPhone 12 devices. No good business continuously manufactures things at a significantly higher rate than demand. It’s not just environmentally wasteful, but it’s a waste of money.
So by moving these extras outside the shrink-wrap, Apple cuts the unit-cost of what’s inside the shrink-wrap. For those who do want those things, they could charge full retail for them and make extra profit, but as has been clearly noted, that would be perceived as a jerk move. It’s very unlikely that Apple will do that. What is likely is that there will be some sort of voucher inserted physically or virtually inside the shrink-wrap that lets customers have the usual basics for “free” or provides a discount for upgraded chargers, buds, etc. The result is that everyone who buys an iPhone 12 pays a prorated cost for chargers, etc, rather than the full cost of one for each iPhone 12. You might ask “Why should customers who don’t want another charger and don’t use that voucher subsidize the cost of the charger for those who do?” Excellent question. Everyone who has unused chargers in a drawer somewhere has been doing just that already, and at full unit cost for each charger. By moving them out of the box, you’re paying less to subsidize the other guy, and also not storing or throwing out a thing that you don’t need. Neither Apple nor its customers ought to continue to pay for something that does not ever need to exist.
The reality is, Apple’s stock valuation is not going to result in a decision by them to take a loss by giving customers “freebies” that they don’t use, just to accommodate an irrational expectation that there be unneeded items thrown in to seem luxurious. That’s not how these things work.
Hope this rumour is not true. Apple should assume that every iPhone is sold to a first time buyer and ensure that it just works. That means having a charger and a cable. They can make an argument for the EarPods, but I think it should be included as well.
If the charger and EarPods are optional, it will become like a fast food sale - "Would you like some fries with that? Small, medium or large? How about a Pepsi?"
Why would they assume something that conflicts with the hard data they have on every iPhone purchaser?
If they ship without the extra stuff in the box, they’ll have vouchers for those that need the extras.
Apple has the individual level data on this. The aggregate data says that a significant number of iPhone buyers, probably a majority by far, are return customers. Many of those do not need another charger and cable to throw in the junk drawer. The money saved by not manufacturing and shipping all those unneeded bricks and wires will more than offset the cost of providing them as extras for the much smaller number of people who need or even want them.
Whether a return or new customer, many will probably be very pleased to have options like a discount to upgrade to AirPods, rather than having another wired pair to toss in the drawer and full-price to get to the wireless upgrade. Same goes with the charging gear. Having the basics in the box (again) creates waste and actually disincentivizes decisions to upgrade to, say, a wireless charging pad. Making it all optional does the opposite. If handled right, this won’t be a bad PR nightmare, it’ll be yet another thing that makes Apple customers happy and leaves Samsung, et al wondering why they’re wasting money packing unwanted junk in phone boxes, until they manage to follow suit next year.
Vouchers may be an acceptable trade-off.
As for e-waste, if Apple is moving to braided cables as rumoured, then they'd probably last longer and we'd need less of them.
The ear buds that have come with every iPhone I've purchased are all sitting in a drawer waiting for someone to need them. They've never fit my ears, so excluding them from future phones won't bother me. I'm aware that I'm in the minority in that regard.
Similar holds true for the charging block. IF they're going to continue to use the same block in use now. If they're going to change to something else, I'd hope they'd include it in the package, or at least have an optional bundle.
Apple products, iPhones and otherwise, are premium products and should come complete with a premium charger and EarPods. What trillion valuation does Apple need to achieve to ‘offset’ the cost anything let alone 5G? Got too many chargers and EarPods kicking around? Feel free to donate them away or give them to your local Apple Store so you can feel good about helping Apple ‘offset’ their costs. If Apple starts selling cars, will the Gen 2+ models be sold without wheels or chargers since you can just transfer your Gen 1 components over? I think it’s just a greedy way to appear more environmentally conscious.
This is a baffling misunderstanding of how business works. Tesla already sells electric cars, and a fast charger for your garage is not included with your $120,000 car. You’re going to buy one of those, but if you trade in your Tesla in a few years for an upgrade, you’re not going to want another fast charger for your garage, and they’re still not going to include one with your new car. There are already a lot of USB-charged electronic devices that don’t ship with a brick in the box right now. Most people already have a handful of the things in a drawer somewhere.
Despite marketing that says otherwise, no part of anything that you buy comes “free.” The earbuds, chargers, cables, stickers, instructions, box and bag are all included in the price you pay for an iPhone. Everything inside and including the shrink-wrap is charged to you at the full unit cost, plus a markup. Anything moved outside the shrink-wrap could be considered at a pro-rated cost through the use of a voucher. Because not everyone wants one of those luxuriously thick Apple Store bags or a printed copy of the receipt, those things are factored into the price at a prorated amount. If 62% of customers leave the Apple Store with their iPhone in a bag, then everyone who buys an iPhone pays for .62 times the unit cost for the bag (This is a simplification, as the bags’ cost is prorated across everything sold in the store).
So the point is, if chargers and cables are moved outside of the shrink-wrap, the math changes. Whether it’s because of 5G or something else, chances are pretty good that the unit cost of an assembled iPhone 12 is more than the unit cost of last year’s model. To address that, Apple is either going to raise the price, reduce the profit margin, cut the cost of something else inside the shrink-wrap, or some combination of all three (though reducing the profit margin isn’t something they will do for long if they intend to stay in business). Moving the charger, cable, and/or wired buds outside the shrink-wrap cuts the unit cost of the device. It also cuts overall manufacturing costs because Apple knows that demand for those things is significantly less than 1:1 to the demand for new iPhone 12 devices. No good business continuously manufactures things at a significantly higher rate than demand. It’s not just environmentally wasteful, but it’s a waste of money.
So by moving these extras outside the shrink-wrap, Apple cuts the unit-cost of what’s inside the shrink-wrap. For those who do want those things, they could charge full retail for them and make extra profit, but as has been clearly noted, that would be perceived as a jerk move. It’s very unlikely that Apple will do that. What is likely is that there will be some sort of voucher inserted physically or virtually inside the shrink-wrap that lets customers have the usual basics for “free” or provides a discount for upgraded chargers, buds, etc. The result is that everyone who buys an iPhone 12 pays a prorated cost for chargers, etc, rather than the full cost of one for each iPhone 12. You might ask “Why should customers who don’t want another charger and don’t use that voucher subsidize the cost of the charger for those who do?” Excellent question. Everyone who has unused chargers in a drawer somewhere has been doing just that already, and at full unit cost for each charger. By moving them out of the box, you’re paying less to subsidize the other guy, and also not storing or throwing out a thing that you don’t need. Neither Apple nor its customers ought to continue to pay for something that does not ever need to exist.
The reality is, Apple’s stock valuation is not going to result in a decision by them to take a loss by giving customers “freebies” that they don’t use, just to accommodate an irrational expectation that there be unneeded items thrown in to seem luxurious. That’s not how these things work.
Bad analogy with Tesla - the car comes with a charging cable that’s capable of charging from up to a 50A outlet. The optional wall connector will accept a 60A circuit, so somewhat faster, but that’s only because is no NEMA standard 60A plug, so there is no way to use the included cable with a 60A circuit and they are not tricking you into buying the wall charger.
Nothing comes free, but if Apple has been including accessories and then stops it’s tantamount to a price increase, unless there is a concomitant decrease in price. I don’t think anyone expects that to happen. As for your argument regarding production costs is a bit misleading, too. The same costs increases have applied to every successive generation of iPhone introduced, yet we haven’t had this discussion before. Also, regarding profit margins, Apple has among the largest profit margins in the industry, they are simply not in danger of losing money on the iPhone if they include a charger.
I agree - charging full retail for accessories would be a jerk move but I honesty wouldn’t put it past Apple to do so; I sincerely hope they go with the voucher option. There is perceived value for customers, people can buy a charger if they want/need one, they can get a charger that is actually appropriately sized for the phone, or they can buy something else like a set of AirPods. The end result is people get what they need and apple sales go up.
Inclusion of Qualcomm modems is a double-edged sword - on one hand, they do run faster than the old Intel modems - on the other hand, Qualcomm charges for the chip and also charges a percentage of the entire retail cost of the phone to license their IP.
This is why including Qualcomm in a standard is so controversial - the promise to contribute their IP on FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) terms, but then pull this with their licensing. Qualcomm has been extorting the cellular market since CDMA.
What this means is Qualcomm is collecting a percentage of that 512 GB RAM upgrade your got for your iPhone, even though their technology has nothing to do with that storage upgrade. Everyone else includes the cost of licensing their IP in the cost of the chip you buy - to my knowledge only Qualcomm gets away with this tactic. For more information about the legality of this, Google patent exhaustion.
The top reason that Apple wouldn’t include charger, etc is environmental. The writing has been on the wall for years to not include this stuff. Less stuff manufactured is better. Smaller packing, less weight, less waste. With the amount of phones they ship, it all adds up. On individual shipments, it isn’t a problem. You have to think of the many plane loads that apple uses. More you can fit on a plane, the less fuel is used overall. Less weight means more phones and/or less weight means less fuel used. This is a big thing for Apple and their environmental reports.
If apple ships stuff in the box, what should apple ship? You complain about the 5W charger, yet I do most of my charging on 5W chargers. They do very well, I have lots of them and they last a long time. Higher wattage chargers also use more electricity, even on standby. What should it be, usb a or c? I have a lot of usb a stuff with some usb c. Headphones, should they include wired or wireless?
We have no idea what is going to be in the box or what the pricing is going to be like. But yeah, get upset.
Guys and gals and others this isn’t a price thing, after all, what does a company with a 2 trillion valuation care about the two of three dollars these accessories cost? They’re just trying to make the box as small as possible. At some point these things will just ship shrink-wrapped in a bubble mailer. They’ll make it eco-friendly, compostable, you’ll be able to use the packaging as fertilizer....
Comments
They can make an argument for the EarPods, but I think it should be included as well.
If the charger and EarPods are optional, it will become like a fast food sale - "Would you like some fries with that? Small, medium or large? How about a Pepsi?"
Also, for a truly reduced environmental impact, Apple could easily eliminate the retail packaging altogether and use simple, sealed flat pack packaging for in-Apple Retail Store sales.
It's a mindset change and thankfully new generations are more aware of packaging issues and the impact of the environment.
If they ship without the extra stuff in the box, they’ll have vouchers for those that need the extras.
I totally agree with the others - Apple is a trillion dollar company with record profits and the highest profit margins in the industry. The fact that they only included a woefully inadequate 5W charger before was already inexcusable.
So the point is, if chargers and cables are moved outside of the shrink-wrap, the math changes. Whether it’s because of 5G or something else, chances are pretty good that the unit cost of an assembled iPhone 12 is more than the unit cost of last year’s model. To address that, Apple is either going to raise the price, reduce the profit margin, cut the cost of something else inside the shrink-wrap, or some combination of all three (though reducing the profit margin isn’t something they will do for long if they intend to stay in business). Moving the charger, cable, and/or wired buds outside the shrink-wrap cuts the unit cost of the device. It also cuts overall manufacturing costs because Apple knows that demand for those things is significantly less than 1:1 to the demand for new iPhone 12 devices. No good business continuously manufactures things at a significantly higher rate than demand. It’s not just environmentally wasteful, but it’s a waste of money.
So by moving these extras outside the shrink-wrap, Apple cuts the unit-cost of what’s inside the shrink-wrap. For those who do want those things, they could charge full retail for them and make extra profit, but as has been clearly noted, that would be perceived as a jerk move. It’s very unlikely that Apple will do that. What is likely is that there will be some sort of voucher inserted physically or virtually inside the shrink-wrap that lets customers have the usual basics for “free” or provides a discount for upgraded chargers, buds, etc. The result is that everyone who buys an iPhone 12 pays a prorated cost for chargers, etc, rather than the full cost of one for each iPhone 12. You might ask “Why should customers who don’t want another charger and don’t use that voucher subsidize the cost of the charger for those who do?” Excellent question. Everyone who has unused chargers in a drawer somewhere has been doing just that already, and at full unit cost for each charger. By moving them out of the box, you’re paying less to subsidize the other guy, and also not storing or throwing out a thing that you don’t need. Neither Apple nor its customers ought to continue to pay for something that does not ever need to exist.
As for e-waste, if Apple is moving to braided cables as rumoured, then they'd probably last longer and we'd need less of them.
Similar holds true for the charging block. IF they're going to continue to use the same block in use now. If they're going to change to something else, I'd hope they'd include it in the package, or at least have an optional bundle.
Nothing comes free, but if Apple has been including accessories and then stops it’s tantamount to a price increase, unless there is a concomitant decrease in price. I don’t think anyone expects that to happen. As for your argument regarding production costs is a bit misleading, too. The same costs increases have applied to every successive generation of iPhone introduced, yet we haven’t had this discussion before. Also, regarding profit margins, Apple has among the largest profit margins in the industry, they are simply not in danger of losing money on the iPhone if they include a charger.
I agree - charging full retail for accessories would be a jerk move but I honesty wouldn’t put it past Apple to do so; I sincerely hope they go with the voucher option. There is perceived value for customers, people can buy a charger if they want/need one, they can get a charger that is actually appropriately sized for the phone, or they can buy something else like a set of AirPods. The end result is people get what they need and apple sales go up.
This is why including Qualcomm in a standard is so controversial - the promise to contribute their IP on FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) terms, but then pull this with their licensing. Qualcomm has been extorting the cellular market since CDMA.
What this means is Qualcomm is collecting a percentage of that 512 GB RAM upgrade your got for your iPhone, even though their technology has nothing to do with that storage upgrade. Everyone else includes the cost of licensing their IP in the cost of the chip you buy - to my knowledge only Qualcomm gets away with this tactic. For more information about the legality of this, Google patent exhaustion.
We have no idea what is going to be in the box or what the pricing is going to be like. But yeah, get upset.