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.
"It's better for the environment that we screw the customer!"
Unless it comes with AT LEAST a price cut from the previous model of at least the value of the charger and earpods purchased separately, Apple isn't doing this crap for the environment. They're doing it for increased profits.
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.
I could say the only 'baffling' thing here is how lengthy a reply you would write, particularly when it was based on multiple predictions that didn't come true. I'm all for healthy discourse, and am open to understanding other points of view. I don't agree that expressing an opinion justifies disrespectful judgement.
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