jungmark

avon b7 said:

The new 13" MBP with function buttons starts at 1699€. Unaffordable for too many people. Add to that that you absolutely must configure it -  and at time of purchase - with what you need for the entire life of the machine, and you understand why they will probably be poor sellers. Any future iPad doesn't count as we are talking new now, not the in the future. Of course 'now' is basically Christmas and not having one of your potential big Christmas sellers ready in time is a business failure. Ditto the iMac. From a business perspective, going into your best quarter and not having refreshed iMacs, iPad, Minis etc ready, is a disaster. Even more so when you have deemed all the ports on those old Macs (which you are selling as brand new) as 'old,' and replaced them with a 'new' port on the new MBPs. It's a marketing nightmare.

Apple has a Jeckll and Hyde approach to volume (in market share terms). Historically they have said it wasn't part of their focus and when they hit rough waters, a large part of the problem was not having enough users to feed from in the pool. Even Jobs said that market share wasn't an issue (for the Mac) only to turn around and state that with 5% marketshare they wanted to go after the other 95%. They even advertised the fact in the press. Apple is also an extras company (Apple Care, dongles, cases etc) All high margin products. Lower sales also push down the sales of those extras. Lost revenues and margins.

Movements over the last few years have been in the opposite direction. Protect margins with new more expensive machines. First the shift to retina and now the new MBPs. The halo effect was real but that new generation of users (who had no previous experience with Apple) is now largely up for renewal but possibly not buying into the platforms second time around. There have been plenty of real indicators but nobody really knows what is happening. Tim Cook generally mentions margins (in very generic terms) in earnings calls and clearly the big.money is there, especially on the high volume, premium priced iPhone but you can only justify those premium prices if your product really is much better than the rest. That hasn't been the case for a few years. Samsung has been pushing Apple to the wire in the public eye. The Note line was the first major threat to Apple: large screens. We all know that Apple admitted (indirectly) that it didn't have what its customers wanted. Number one on many people's list was a larger screen but Apple thought it knew better  than it's customers. They definitely lost sales because of that. Now they think they know what's better for Mac users with the lock stock and barrel switch to USB-C on the new MBP. The negative response has been heard far and wide. It didn't take long for brands like Huawei to put better, faster implementations of the fingerprint sensor onto the market. Google finally took fragmentation of Android more seriously and from Android 6 there has been a noticeable shift in the amount of older phones elegible for upgrade.

My 'Apple will say ...' was not literal. It was a summary of the Apple way of thinking based on past comments and actions from the company. Right now there is nothing in the actions or the words of the company to make us believe they after pushing volume. 

Apple is losing customers on pricing. I am one example of that and we would be foolish to tthink ootherwise. Here we return to affordable again. If you want a relatively large screen or  it is a must have for you, you have to pony up an Apple premium price or move out of the Apple ecosystem. Apple just doesn't have the product spread at the low end or mid range to cater for those users. We are back to margins again. Apple is happy with this but surely losing customers. Yes, the same things happens to competitors but with a manot difference. While competitors can lose customers, they lose them to competitors feeding off the same Android pool. However, those same companies are also receiving from the pool and have the opportunity to absorb iOS switchers too. Apple's offering is logically smaller in the amount of options it can offer but the premium price is a barrier along with screen size etc.

I seriously doubt that Apple has enough critical mass to keep things going if there is a turn around in public opinion. With the launch of the iPhone people began switching in earnest to Apple. People bought products simply because they were Apple products, because they thought they were synonymous of quality. However, these new Apple purchasers do not have the brand loyalty that kept the company afloat in the past. Not long ago, Sony was the king of the hill in consumer electronics. Very much like Apple today. Look at how little it took for Sony to fall from grace.

There is a lot that is wrong at Apple right now. A lot of it is stale thinking but there is also too much 'we know best' and users must adapt to what we decide.

The opposite should be true. The customers should be playing a key role in deciding where the company is heading.