brucemc

anantksundaram said:

corrections said:

... well you are older now. everything is less exciting! 

Speak for yourself.

You certainly are a cantankerous bugger...

knowitall said:

I think what’s missing in this story is what iPhones (and other Apple products) should cost.
This prevents an endless subjective discussion.

A fair estimate should be the BOM (bill of materials), assembly and transport cost, development cost for this specific iPhone (development cost divided by the number of iphones sold) and 10 maybe 15% profit.
In case of the iPhoneXS this is https://www.techspot.com/news/76629-1249-iphone-xs-max-costs-apple-443-make.html about $443 plus max $60 development cost (12 billion development cost overall / 200 million devices) for a $1249 iPhoneXS.
This means that Apple is asking 2 1/2 times the real cost of the device (+$750) while they should ask $550.
I would call this a ripoff factor of 2.

I am not sure what you "knowitall" in, but it certainly isn't business.  Almost no product on the market, from purely commodity resources to food to fashion to high end technology, is priced as you outline.  If you work, I assume it is for the government...

crosslad said:

Apple sales in China are down purely as a tit for tat response to Trump putting a ban on Huawei. The Chinese government has told its people to stop buying Apple products. Once the trade dispute is over China will return to buying IPhones. 

A large number of companies and markets showed a significant downturn in sales in China in the 4th quarter.  The gov'ts official stats (always believed to be overstated to be the most positive possible) said it was the slowest in almost 30 years.  This is not an Apple specific thing (maybe some people don't purchase due to nationalist sentiment, but the big picture is the economic decline).

boltsfan17 said:

tbornot said:

China having a recession might just buy us another decade before the Chinese Military is ready to start a ruckus with the US and Japanese Navies.  So, here’s hoping for confusion to the Emperor of China!

China is still very far behind compared to the US Navy. Even the 44 ships they made between 2016-17 are still far less advanced than what the US Navy has. China has one soviet era aircraft carrier in service. The carriers the US Navy uses blow that out of the water. Another area where China really lags with its Navy is long range strike capabilities. It will take decades for China to get where the US Navy is now. 

Indeed.  I am not American, and don't have a horse in the race, so this is a non-partisan, non-national comment.  A single US carrier battle group has more offensive capability (not including nuclear weapon capabilities in this) than the entire Chinese navy.  US carriers have been refined over 8 decades of combat use, and over 5 decades with nuclear propulsion / very large carrier designs.  

China currently has a couple of active ex-Soviet units, and are bringing to market their own designed ships based on those (building a 3rd carrier reportedly).  Did you know that the Soviet (and current Russian) ships have ramps (curves up) at the front to launch the planes, and don't use catapults like the US navy?  That is because it is much cheaper to do so.  But is also means the launch weight (in terms of plane type, fuel, and ordinance) is limited.  US carriers do not have this problem, and are FAR more capable in all areas as a result.

China is over estimated in the media, both economically and militarily.  Yes, they are a market of almost 1.4B humans, and as such there is big $$ to be made in selling to so many (it is a desirable market), but their economy has serious problems that will become more apparent in the next 20 years.  First is that the population as a whole is rapidly aging, due to their very low birth rate and almost no immigration.  25% of the population is estimated to be over 65 by 2030, up from 13% not that long ago.  Their workforce in total numbers is already shrinking.  There are 30M *less* women than men due to the one child policy and family bias.  Macro trends are not in their favour.  Secondly they also have a very state led economy, which tends to be less innovative and flexible.  Third is the continual erosion of civil liberties (it is getting more controlled, watched, and cut off from the rest of the world) which is unlikely to be economically positive.

If I am Taiwan or the Philippines, I can see being nervous.  Not if I was the USA.

Zarkin said:

The battery is just an indicator of the bigger issue.    It is very similar to when PC's were first introduced in the mid 80's.    Everybody needed to buy a new computer every year as dramatic improvements were being made.   The around the mid 90's improvements started being incremental, and computers reached a point where people really didn't need them to be that much faster for the activities most users did.

The same is happening to mobile phones.   We call them mobile phones but really they are hand held PC's.   Most phone users wouldn't really see a big need to upgrade a 2 year old phone- it still does everything they want it to.   The current batch of phones are even better and may meet buyer's needs for the next 5 or 6 years.   The battery is just a limiting component that runs out within that time frame

There really isn't a compelling reason- for most people- to upgrade their phones every year or even every 2 or 3 years anymore.

Indeed, and Apple's Mac business has been in this scenario for over a decade.  Would you say the Mac business is failing?  

Also, I don't see phones reaching the same upgrade cycle (duration) as PC's, due to their mobile (breakage) nature, and that being a mobile device always on, there are still features that can be added bringing new functionality that drives upgrades.  iPhone upgrade cycle is certainly greatly lengthening, but I would not say that it is past 4 years on average.