avon b7

AppleExposed said:

avon b7 said:

AppleExposed said:

rogifan_new said:

mubaili said:

Apple must not talk itself into believing that it cannot gain more market share. It must act aggressively, speed up the cycle, and push more variety of devices, i.e., do what they have done to the iPad line up to the iPhone line up. 

The problem is price, plain and simple. In 2016 the flagship iPhone started at $649. One year later the flagship model was $999. Even the Xr which is supposed to be the more affordable model starts at $749, $100 more than the flagship from 2 years prior. It doesn’t matter if the tech inside the phone or the materials it’s made with are more advanced/expensive to manufacture. At the end of the day the average selling price of the iPhone has steadily been going up. And consumers are starting to say no thanks, I’ll keep what I’ve got it’s good enough.

With the X I think Apple was testing how much of a price increase the market would bear (and the higher ASP would allow them to show revenue growth even when sales were flat to down). I think they got their answer. I’d be surprised if there are any price cuts this year and I’ll bet the XS gets removed from the lineup. But I don’t think we’ll see any price increases or storage configurations that push up the price. And I’ll bet we see Apple aggressively pushing trade-ins again.

The problem with this statement is that the iPhone X sold really well.

This affirmation is actually questionable for various reasons.

Apple never revealed any numbers beyond saying it was the most popular iPhone. It's all relative if the less popular iPhones weren't far behind iPhone X but didn't of course reach 'most popular' status. So, I think Apple made that claim for two or maybe three quarters and for the last quarter they said nothing.

That ties in with some analysts reporting at the time that iPhone X sales had dropped off faster than any other new release before it.

It was retired in the 2018 refresh and the first quarter of that cycle Apple issued a profit warning.

While we will probably never know all of what happened, it is very reasonable to speculate that the iPhone pool of purchasers simply ran out of 'financial steam' and sales dropped as a result. 

Tim Cook said it sold well.

Your theories are irrelevant.

My theories are no more or no less relevant than yours.

Tim Cook saying it 'sold well'  doesn't say much. If you only release three phones a year (or only two, prior to the X) but ship over 200 million handsets, it likely that sold well could be applied to all of them.

What the OP was referencing was that overall, prices for new releases had gone up. As a result people bought those new releases in smaller numbers.

What I was referencing was an extension to that logic. That, at any given time, there are only so many people who can reach those high prices. Some of them probably bought the iPhone X and most of those left the group of potential buyers as a result. Others may have been able to afford one but didn't see enough value in the Xr, Xs lines so opted out.

It's possible that when the 2018 refresh occurred (with those prices) there were simply far fewer takers.

At first Apple upped the promotion of financing deals on top of the regular upgrade/trade in offers.

As they went 'all hands' just before Christmas, they went one step further and introduced new trade in deals with bigger discounts and put them on the front page of the Apple websites. Originally they were called 'limited time' promotions. The last time I checked, they were still on the front page.

That tells us a lot about expectations and sales even in the absence of official numbers.

And if you want to quote Tim Cook, remember it was him who said Apple had miscalculated.

IMO, they miscalculated on various aspects and price was just one of them

AppleExposed said:

rogifan_new said:

mubaili said:

Apple must not talk itself into believing that it cannot gain more market share. It must act aggressively, speed up the cycle, and push more variety of devices, i.e., do what they have done to the iPad line up to the iPhone line up. 

The problem is price, plain and simple. In 2016 the flagship iPhone started at $649. One year later the flagship model was $999. Even the Xr which is supposed to be the more affordable model starts at $749, $100 more than the flagship from 2 years prior. It doesn’t matter if the tech inside the phone or the materials it’s made with are more advanced/expensive to manufacture. At the end of the day the average selling price of the iPhone has steadily been going up. And consumers are starting to say no thanks, I’ll keep what I’ve got it’s good enough.

With the X I think Apple was testing how much of a price increase the market would bear (and the higher ASP would allow them to show revenue growth even when sales were flat to down). I think they got their answer. I’d be surprised if there are any price cuts this year and I’ll bet the XS gets removed from the lineup. But I don’t think we’ll see any price increases or storage configurations that push up the price. And I’ll bet we see Apple aggressively pushing trade-ins again.

The problem with this statement is that the iPhone X sold really well.

This affirmation is actually questionable for various reasons.

Apple never revealed any numbers beyond saying it was the most popular iPhone. It's all relative if the less popular iPhones weren't far behind iPhone X but didn't of course reach 'most popular' status. So, I think Apple made that claim for two or maybe three quarters and for the last quarter they said nothing.

That ties in with some analysts reporting at the time that iPhone X sales had dropped off faster than any other new release before it.

It was retired in the 2018 refresh and the first quarter of that cycle Apple issued a profit warning.

While we will probably never know all of what happened, it is very reasonable to speculate that the iPhone pool of purchasers simply ran out of 'financial steam' and sales dropped as a result. 

AppleExposed said:

avon b7 said:

macplusplus said:

avon b7 said:

macplusplus said:

avon b7 said:

macplusplus said:

elijahg said:

jdw said:

The continued presence of the "notch" coupled with what consumers perceive as the biggest bang for the buck is no doubt driving this.

The notch doesn't concern me personally, but the price does. I'll always (within reason) be loyal to Apple, but more and more people are looking at Apple's £1000 phones and thinking "nah, you know what, I'm going to switch to Android," where they get 75% of the features for 25% of the price. Some of the Chinese Android phones really are surprisingly good, even at the £250 price bracket. My friend's £250 Xiaomi has incredible low-light camera performance. Makes the Xs look like something from 5 years ago.

Current iPhone toting friends are either holding off on a 5s sized device, or as I am, cheaper phones. The flagship 6s was £650 which was pretty good bang for your buck. It was way better than any other phone then. The flagship Xs is now £1000, but hardware wise is it really that much better than the competition? Is it really that much better than the 6s? Software is of course much better than Android, but that was already factored into the £650 iPhone's cost. The Xs is certainly not £350 better than my 6s was at the time.

If you consider Face ID and the Neural Engine yes, it is. Competitors have already given up face identification on behalf of “almost notchless” phones. Face ID is the only successful tech in that domain. Is it luxurious or burlesque? Absolutely not because you get it as cheap as $750, even cheaper with trade in on the XR. Don’t underestimate that Face ID assembly, it may open a whole growth domain to the iPhone such as health: face analysis, iris analysis, and even more (imagine a Siri that can detect makeup errors or suggest hair style ). It is not a fancy Animoji tool. The Watch acquired a whole health and fitness domain thanks to its heart rate sensors.

Apple’s another superiority is its use of the same CPU across all models of the same generation. Competitors offer differing CPUs by country even in the same model, those may differ even by store or by batch, there is no guarantee. So you get an A12 iPhone for as low as $750 and even cheaper with trade in. I am very glad I could buy an A11 iPhone 8+ substantially cheaper than iPhone X.

Android hasn't given up on face identification. It was used long before FaceID, (which is simply one - expensive - form of face identification and using 3D depth sensing) and is still widely used as a convenience biometric. It is a shame that Apple doesn't offer the same convenience options for iPhones without 3D depth sensing.

Also, FaceID is not the only successful use of the tech. An example of using 3D depth sensing, 3D object scanning/modelling, skeletal mapping and VR:



That video was taken almost a year ago. Baby steps but, AFAIK, Apple didn't provide anything similar when they could have done. Rumours point to the tech moving forward with the Mate 30 Pro.

It is true that, in general, Android phones are trying to reduce notches to their minimum expression and passing on expensive biometrics where other solutions provide more than sufficient security for payments etc. I think the goal was to maximise screen to body ratios and that is what we are seeing.

We don’t deal with vaporware. If those become a true product and in Apple’s scale come back again !

It is a real product. The video was taken at the official presentation for the Mate 20 Pro last year. I didn't link to the full official presentation as it almost two hours long. That's why it's just someone filming from the audience.

What you don’t understand is in today’s tech world, selling companies is more  important than selling products. This is why vaporware exist. Blow a balloon with apparently novel but most probably tried tested and already failed brilliant idea, upload a few videos to YouTube, buy a few expo booths, and you don’t have to deliver anything more. There are shitloads of click-thirsty tech writers and TV reporters that would jump onto that and automatically inflate you startup company’s value to some satisfactory level. Then you sell the company and become vapor yourself grabbing all those angel investors’ money. Even Apple couldn’t save itself from such a scam, remember their sapphire adventure.

This is no longer your 1970s capitalism...

You are not addressing the points I made:

Face identification is widely used on Android even without 3D depth sensing.

FaceID is simply a biometric and easily substituted for other biometrics if you want to maximise screen to body ratio.

FaceID is not the only successful use of 3D depth sensing.

You veered off into a rant on other points.

FaceID is the most secure biometric lock in history. Apples not gonna give that up for you.

Also face sensing on the knockoffs is rushed garbage to tick a box in typical Android fashion.

FaceID actually isn't the 'most secure biometric lock in history' although I don't know what you mean by 'lock'.

Either way, you seem to lack much knowledge on biometrics, purpose, trade-offs etc.

Please backup your claim of 'garbage tick a box' Android feature.

jcs2305 said:

bigtds said:

omalansky said:

My housekeeper, who has a Samsung phone, occasionally asks me to help her do something on her phone. What a mess! I'd end up shooting myself if I had to switch to the Android operating system!

Don't pretend this dosen't happen with iOS also.

Don't pretend you read the post either... OP helped the house keeper thinks Android is a mess and hard to navigate and would NEVER use it. I feel the same when my father asks me to do something on his Android phone as well.  Can I get done what he asks ..yes.. Do I find it a bit slow and convoluted getting to simple things..that are quickly accessed on IOS yes I do.

Personally if I ever had to make the jump to Android it would only be Pixel for me, or whatever phone is running stock Android with proper updates.

Can you provide some examples of simple things that are convoluted?

To take a screenshot on my Android I simply double tap the screen with a knuckle.

To go into splitscreen mode I simply draw a horizontal line on the screen (again with a knuckle). To silence an incoming call I simply turn it over. If I am horizontal on the sofa and holding the phone horizontally, I do nothing. The phone uses AI to override rotational preferences.

urahara said:

GeorgeBMac said:

Soli said:

There's really nothing surprising about this. The plateauing of smartphones design is upon us and with vendors following Apple's lead (which may or may not be from stolen IP) there are more than enough similarities. People that care about protecting their data probably won't jump to Android-based devices and those that are fine with built-in crapware (at best) and spyware (at worse) will likely never see a reason to use an iPhone. To each their own.

1)  Rather than "stolen ip" it is more probably just a case of a maturing market -- just as happened with PCs a couple decades ago.  Samsung hardware (or that from Huawei or most any other vendor) is a close enough match to Apple's that most people won't notice enough of a difference to pay a premium price simply to get an Apple on the back cover.

Which leads directly to your second point:
2)  "People that care about protecting their data....".   Yes, it is the Apple ecosystem that will set Apple apart from the Samsungs, Huawei's and others...   Data privacy is part of that (a big part), but not the entire part.  It also includes the Apple reputation for quality, its willingness and ability to service its products (even if that is simply answering a 'how to' question at the Apple store), its inhouse apps like Numbers and Maps, its great, user friendly OS, its integration with other Apple products such as the watch, and background things such as iCloud backup that prevent those disasters that should never happen but do...

The Mac line is a good example for the iPhone line:
A Mac, any Mac, without MacOS is simply a very expensive Windows machine that any manufacturer can match or better whenever they choose.   Macs excel not from their hardware (which is always very good but still mostly just off the shelf stuff anybody can buy and assemble) but from their OS and Apple's ecosystem.   And, iPhones are entering that same mature product arena.

So, I agree with the implication of what you say:   Apple needs to shift from emphasizing and relying on its hardware and emphasize the other things that set their products like the iPhone apart.

Which device matches MacBook Pro 15'' (2018)?

Maybe this?

https://www.techradar.com/reviews/huawei-matebook-x-pro