davidw

nubus said:

Microsoft did behave like this when it took a terrible browser (Internet Explorer), bundled with their ubiquitous Windows OS and told HP etc. that they couldn't bundle other browsers... so Microsoft used their position within OS to win browsers. US stopped that.

Now Apple is trying to do like MS. Use the position in one area to block competition. Doing so with NFC access, app store, and demanding Webkit to be used. EU isn't blocking the use of Apple Pay - they just demand Apple to allow for competition. This is how things should be done. 

Do some homework before making nonsense comments. 

This is not at all like the US vs Microsoft case. Or even the EU vs Microsoft case. In those cases, Microsoft was accused of abusing the monopoly they had with Windows. Microsoft Windows was on over a 95% of the World desktop computers. They both found Microsoft guilty because Microsoft had a monopoly and was abusing it. And a true monopoly under every country anti-trust laws. Not some made up BS like being a "gatekeeper".  

By not having a monopoly, Apple has never been accused of violating any anti-trust laws, even though Apple has been bundling Safari with every Mac since 2003. Apple even canceled third party venders from selling Mac clones by no longer licensing out their OS, their new System 8 OS in 1998. This put venders like Power Computing out of business. No anti-trust violations there. Even though Apple eliminated all competition they had for the sale of Macs. Now there are some uninformed here that would claim Apple had a "monopoly" with their Mac OS and should had been charged with abusing a monopoly by no longer licensing it out, but that is not the case. Mac OS (System 8) is not a market under US anti-trust laws.  Not then, not now.    

Microsoft was abusing a monopoly, Apple is not. It's laughable that you think Apple is doing the same now. When iOS is on 95% of the Worlds mobile devices, then we can talk about how Apple might abusing their position, like Microsoft was back in the 1990's. 

  

elijahg said:

Naiyas said:

timmillea said:   

What naive tosh! It is true that Apple sets prices in $US in the US. Overseas prices are based on the US prices plus local sales taxes plus a hefty margin for exchange rate variability, plus an extra profit margin, then rounded up to the next price point. 

The  example quoted by JP234 of the Mac Mini going from $699 to $599 in the US. That same Mac Mini M2 is £649 in the UK. At the current exchange rate of $1.2395/£ that is $804.43. 

Apple has always charged much higher prices outside of the US. For a high-end Mac, the difference in price will pay for a holiday to the US to buy it. 

Perhaps we should demonstrate the example drawn out above correctly as the comparative being drawn seems to imply that there is over $200 of additional profit on the UK price when it’s no where near that.

Base cost of mini: $599

This price includes no sales tax in the US. When the product comes to the UK pricing includes sales tax, but it also includes import duties. So what are these?

Import duty: ~10% adds ~$59.90

VAT: 20% on base cost AND duty adds $131.78

So the “real consumer price” is actually ~$790.68

Converting this to UK currency at the rate above we get a UK price of £637.90.

The round up to the price point of £649 gives an additional margin of just over £11 in this case, so one can reasonably argue that the so called price gauging overseas is not as bad as first implied. The real issue is the duties and taxes that are added and go straight to the UK government.

We also need to remember overseas that the US price is not the real price paid as sales taxes get added, but this varies greatly depending on where in the US you buy (and use, technically) the item.

Whilst this is true, there have been plenty of times whereby that extra margin as a percentage is in the high teens. That and as Lkrupp rightly (???) said, "What goes up never comes down". As far as I'm aware, Apple has rarely (if ever?) corrected the foreign prices downwards in response to exchange rate fluctuations, only ever up.

https://www.purchasely.com/blog/app-store-prices-decrease-in-all-territories-that-use-euro-currency

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone-prices/apple-lowers-some-iphone-prices-outside-u-s-to-offset-strong-dollar-idUSKCN1PO06G

lkrupp said:

What goes up never comes down in the retail universe.

Only the price of apps didn't go up. The Apple App Store price their apps in US Dollars, in every country. And each country pays the equivalent in their own currency, based on the exchange rate of their currency. If the exchange rate goes up or down, then the changes in the price of apps (in their country) is reflected in their currency, when Apple makes the correction. But whether they end up paying more or less for the apps in their currency, they are still paying the same equivalent price in US Dollars for the apps. Apple did not raise (or lower) the price of apps in their App Store. The exchange rate between the US Dollar and other currencies, goes up and down daily. But I don't know what criteria Apple sets to determine when the changes are reflected in the Apple App Store pricing in other currencies. But I do know that when the exchange rate is not favorable for Apple, for too long, they report it in their earnings report to explain one of the reasons why earnings or profits might had taken a hit. (Remember, the exchange rate also affects the pricing of Apple hardware, in other countries.)    

cincytee said:

spheric said:

darkvader said:

racerhomie3 said:

Nothing short of amazing.

Amazing?  More like pitiful. 

We have these little things — we call them "phones", but they're really hand-held computers, and most people replace them every two or three years. Yeah, it's a little disconcerting, I know.  

What's truly disconcerting is that we've been convinced that we just have to discard perfectly useful devices every "two or three years" -- and that ending software support is one of the main causes. Maybe your attention spans are too short to remember the reviews when these devices were introduced five to seven years ago. They were described as breathtakingly fast with stunning graphics and remarkable power. They didn't get less powerful over the years; consumers have been trained to be permanently dissatisfied. Nice for my Apple shares; not so great for the resources new devices consume or the waste discarded devices generate (even with recycling programs).

No one is "discarding" their perfectly useful devices every 2 or 3 years. You make it sound like these devices are thrown in the trash bin. What's happening every 2 or 3 years is that there are people that want the features found on newer devices, not because they want to use the newest OS. (I don't know of any 2 to 3 year old smartphone, that can't run the newest OS.) So they usually sell or trade-in their perfectly useful 2-3 year old device while resale value is still high, to help pay for the new one. Or they hand it down to a family member, to replace an even older device. 

Imagine if everyone used their device until it was no longer useful. How will the consumers that can't afford a new iPhone, ever going to own one? With a 2 or 3 and even 5 year old used iPhone, those consumer might be able to own an iPhone that might be still useful for another 5 years and maybe still run the latest OS for another year or  two. There's a whole economy built around selling used devices, that are still useful. 

Five to seven years ago, there was no 5G. Mobile providers didn't start implementing 5g networks until 2019. Consumers with 5 year old smartphones will need to buy a new phone in order to use 5G. No software update or being able to run the latest OS is going to make that 5 year old phone work on a 5G network. This is also true with better camera technology, newest Bluetooth, higher resolution screen, bigger screen, fingerprint scanner, more storage, satellite communication and many other features that consumers might want, that are hardware oriented. Even if their 2 to 3 year phone can run the newest OS, it might never have these hardware oriented features. 

Apple still support an iPhone 6 because the carriers still support an iPhone 6. An iPhone 6 can still be used, as originally purchased when new, even though it's not running the latest iOS. On the other hand, there's no longer a reason for Apple to support the iPhone 5s. Since 2022, mobile carriers no longer activated an iPhone 5s because it doesn't support VoLTE (HD voice). After 7 years (since being retired), a iPhone 5s is no longer useful as a mobile phone, no matter what cutting edge technology Apple said it had 7 years ago. But its iOS 12 is still being updated because it's also the last iOS that the still useful iPhone 6 can use. 

genovelle said:

foregoneconclusion said:

CEOs don't choose to lay off employees because it's "difficult". They do it because it's easy. It's the fastest way to make the numbers look better. Notice that Ek is trying to spin it like the higher number of employees was holding him back from doing his best work. Completely ridiculous. 

Of course it’s Apple’s fault that he chose to add employees at 2X the revenue growth. On the other hand Apple, the company that could more easily have afforded to do so, remained conservative with their hiring. Any logical person would have known the pandemic volume was temporary and would not continue indefinitely. 

That's not what happened. It was OPEX (operating expense) that was outpacing revenue growth by 2x. Most likely from the added expense of starting their podcast service. And in order to bring that down OPEX, they laid off employees. With labor cost being one of  biggest contributor to OPEX, in most businesses. 

"To offer some perspective on why we are making this decision, in 2022, the growth of Spotify's OPEX outpaced our revenue growth by 2X," wrote Ek. "That would have been unsustainable long-term in any climate, but with a challenging macro environment, it would be even more difficult to close the gap."

Now i could be wrong and maybe "OPEX" means something other the "operating expense" in the EU. It's usually expressed as "OpEX" (with a lower case P).