minisu1980

GG1 said:

I don't upgrade my iPhones too often, but when I do, I either sell or give away my old ones to people new to iPhones (there is one less Android owner and one less Blackberry owner out there).

Apple may disappoint analysts with very slightly less sales volume year-on-year (negligible, IMO), but the pool of perfectly usable second-hand iPhones in-use must be growing substantially, posing a big threat to new Android sales. This article is spot-on.

This is an often overlooked point. iPhones function longer, stay in active use longer (don’t end up collecting dust in a drawer), have higher resale value, and trickle down to more price sensitive consumers or those who see little value in technology (think grandma).

My wife and I upgrade every year or two and always give away our iPhones. We used to give them away to family, however all of them now either have a functioning iPhone from us or are now upgrading to newer iPhones on their own accord. The vast majority of these iPhones replaced their junk Android phone they first got sold on from their carrier. Now we have run out of family so we have started giving them away to close friends. Not sure what to do when we runout of friends. Once these out live their use as smartphones (too old or battery no longer holds a charge) they almost always end up repurposed in a dock as a music player or other such scenario where they are always plugged in. This represents a lot of people being indoctrinated into the Apple ecosystem even if this would not have been their choice due to: cost concerns, ignorance of the experience differential, believing technology to be too difficult to use. I think once the smartphone market stops growing Apples going to be just fine, Android not so much.

flashfan207 said:

lkrupp said:

In the end all I can go on is my personal history with Apple since 1982. In all that time I’ve had to have service performed on my Apple products only a couple of times. First was a bad power supply in my original Power Macintosh 8100 in 1994. Move forward almost 25 years and I recently had the head hinge fail on my iMac 14,2 (2013). The iMac was long out of warranty but the hinge was replaced no charge.

Apple truly is the best for this. I can honestly say that there is no other store like the Apple Store where you feel appreciated as a dedicated customer. 

100% agree. Just a few weeks ago I went into an Apple store to replace my wife’s Series 3 Apple Watch. I had purchased it as a Christmas gift in early November, she previously had the original Apple Watch in stainless steel, however this time she wanted a color that only came in the aluminum so I ordered that one. I kept it hidden in the house and gifted it on Christmas. After wearing the watch for a month or so we started to notice she was developing a rash on her wrist. Long story short she has an sensitivity to aluminum. We were busy so we didn’t get to an Apple store until the beginning of March. Our plan was to purchase her a new stainless steel Apple Watch and give her aluminum to a friend or family member. Instead when we explained the issue they offered to just take it back and let us upgrade to the stainless steel for the price difference. This was unexpected especially since the front face of her watch was slightly marred. Since we had already planned on spending the full amount for a new watch we went ahead and purchased a HomePod (which is awesome!).

This is why we buy so many Apple products. The typical customer support experience with other electronics companies is a miserable one and often leaves the customer with one take away ... never buy that brand again, or if they believe this to be a common problem to that type of electronic item it causes them to be dissatisfied with the product category as a whole which inevitably means less of their discretionary income will be spent on them in the future. This is a great example of where Apple sees the bigger picture vs the straight dollars and cents of customer service.

This next year is going to hurt for Samsung. In the past they were able to retain component orders from others due to the technology advancements made possible by economies of scale realized across their internal product lines. Smartphone components have become so specialized that the technologies are losing portablility to other lines of products, generally speaking. This makes it harder for Samsung to leverage R&D across multiple products. Additionally, Apple can now gaurntee enough business for a long enough duration to make it profitable for Samsung’s competitors to invest in cutting edge component production. This hurts Samsung on two fronts, first it takes away Apple component order dollars from them and second it allows a competitor to supply these components to other would be Samsung customers further reducing Samsung’s return on R&D and infrastructure investments. 2018 is perhaps the last year Samsung will be the leader or sole source for cutting edge components ... it’s all down hill from here. It is ironic in a way that even if Samsung is the first to develop a new technology they will get Samaunged by other component makers who receive Apples business.

gatorguy said:

GG1 said:

melgross said:

While I can generally agree with the article, there are things missing from it. One is that it’s entirely focused on Google. But Samsung sells a fair number of tablets. It’s estimated, as we don’t know how many smartphones, smart watches or tablets they really sell, as they don’t say in quarterly reports, that Samsung sells between 15 and 25% as many tablets as Apple. We don’t know if Samsung’s tablet sales have fallen in recent years as Apple’s has, something the article also fails to address.

but Samsung does it’s own SoCs, as Apple does. We don’t know exactly what the differences Samsung’s has, as they don’t just use their own. But a big thing here is that Google is apparently getting tired of not having a state of the art SoC. They’ve begun a chip division, hiring away a major designer from Apple, and I suspect, from others as well. We’ll see how that works out, as it will take a couple of years for any result of that to become available. Will they make these for the Android market in general, or just for themselves? Nobody knows.

if we poo poo their SoC before it comes out, just remember that the same thing was said about Apple’s attempt, before that came out.

Samsung have the SoC but not the OS. This is the perfect opportunity for Samsung to take over the tablet market using Tizen. I just don't think Samsung have shown in the past at being very good at software, so this may not actually happen.

Eventually, the Android tablet vendors will need an updated OS. So where is it going to come from?

Google didn't drop tablet support, even if the article's author may have implied as much (heck pretty much stated it as fact) with the way the article was structured. Only Google's own tablets are being discontinued, not Android tablet support.

So they are discontinuing the superior pure Android tablet experience that they had to make because their partners were incapable/unwilling to provide it on their own. What exactly does that say of the quality of what Samsung and others are selling when the platform developers have to try and step in to make it decent. Yes Gatorguy you've made your point, the other Android tablets that were inferior to this offering are still going to be supported by Google (for now).

“Quite incredibly, Google tablets have clearly gone the way of Google TV, Google Glass, Chromebook Pixel, Nexus Player and Android Wear.”

Someone is feeling generous today, the list of Google failures far exceeds those listed: Google fiber, Boston Dynamics, Motorola to name a few. Oh don’t forget Google plus or whatever it’s social network clone was called. This is also not to mention all the other slow motion train wrecks, moonshots I believe they are called, that are still actively in progress. The loss on this crap got so bad they formed Alphabet so it would not drag down their only successful product search (ad selling).

oh so forgot about the HTC thing that is not a purchase while at the same time being a purchase. I’m reading the tea leaves here and they portent failure yet again!