Oh Dear ....
This will upset Rik Myslewski who seems to think Apple is doing so well .....
:)
Apple needs to start making bargain basement mobes because soon there won't be enough rich new iPhone customers left in the world to prop up its sales growth, a leading analyst has suggested. The claim comes in a report by Toni Sacconaghi, senior analyst with Bernstein Research, with the snappy title: "Are There Enough Wealthy …
What will the rich and the middle class eat ? There will be dirt left over of course, but before I sign up for Soylent Green recycling, I owe a huge Harrruuummmppphhh to middle class financial planners who might cause the rich to suffer a perfectly foreseeable protein shortage.
FIVE BILLION rookie financial planners are an ethical nightmare for the Industry.
The only thing that matters is does Apple continue to make a profit on its iPhone business. How exactly does making a bigger market with less profit and diluting your brand image by selling cheap phones help?
Is BMW going out of business becuase its not selling some cheap junk ass £5 car to indians?
As long as Apple keep their brand, keep producing quality, which people are prepared to pay for, then joining the race to the bottom is for idiots.
Thats why they are Apple with 150 Billion in cash and he's a analysts earning 60K a year if lucky, what a cretin!
Thats not necessarily true - when a product turns from a rising star into a cash cow companies can respond by offering a dividend if they have nothing else to drive share growth. Infact if you're a defensive minded investor you are likely to favour high dividend stocks over high potential growth stocks.
Like other posters have said this "analysis" rests on the assumption that Market growth doesnt have natural limits anyway.
You say 'this report' as if it's an actual fact - while iPhone users are loyal and would buy a new iPhone next time a huge number are to new users and those old iPhones (when people do upgrade) also get passed on. Someone is still using my old 3GS (4+ years old) and my 4S etc. In comparison most old Android phones get dumped in a drawer as they have little / no value and no support.
Yes, compare the article subheading: "Want to stay in business?"
...to the article itself: "This could mean that the fruity firm's growth will "invariably slow" unless it caters to the lower end of the market."
The stock-market-driven obsession with constant growth has obscured the (blooming obvious) fact that there's a major difference between *growth* slowing and going out of business because your *sales* slowed to a halt.
Growth *slowing* implies that sales are *still bloody growing*(!)... not likely to go out of business, then. Growth could grind to a complete halt, and you'd still be selling as many as you were before.
Market share can also make things look worse than they are, since if the market grows and your sales remain the same (or even if they're growing, but not as fast as the market is expanding), you "lose" market share. In the case of smartphones, many- probably most- of the new customers that make up the expanded market wouldn't have been buying an iPhone anyway.
Have you noticed that Mercedes came out with a C Class that starts at $29,900 USD?
I guess not.
It's not a "Race to the bottom" as you think, but a race for the "Rest of the Market".
Why else would Apple even consider bringing out the 5C?
Burn!
Apple would have made the '5' into the lower / cheaper model but instead basically rebadged the '5' as a '5c' and not only gave a cheaper option but also opened it up to a wider market. I know people who really do not care about a fingerprint sensor but love the 5c colours.
>>>>Have you noticed that Mercedes came out with a C Class that starts at $29,900 USD?
>> Have you noticed that a hyundai is half the price, and still has 4 wheels?
Yeah, but people might see you in it.
I've seen a Kia Somethingorother parked in a mall display that was $42k !!!
"Have you noticed that Mercedes came out with a C Class that starts at $29,900 USD?"
Haven't you noticed that Mercedes has a car that sells for half that? They are called "Smart" although I don't know if they are sold in the USA
Seriously people, drop the auto analogies.
>Have you noticed that Mercedes came out with a C Class that starts at $29,900 USD?
There was a reason for that: The BMW 3 Series.
It turns out that a large number of people who buy luxury cars tend to be very brand loyal, once they start buying a particular brand they tend not to switch unless they have a really bad experience (or they have sufficient money to own several cars - a guy from Bentley once told me that they were typically the sixth car in someone's garage).
BMW started at the bottom end of the market (with things like the three-wheeled isetta) and worked their way up. Mercedes were at the top end of the market and have gradually moved down.
Why? Because the lower priced cars get "ordinary" people in to the brand and generally they work their way up. In the 1980's BMW's 3-Series acted as a feeder for the 5-Series and the 7-Series. Mercedes cheapest model was twice the price and once people were in BMWs they had to have a bad experience to even look at something else.
In order to counter this, Mercedes started with the C190 and then as that still wasn't an low enough rung on the ladder, they followed that up with the A-Class.
AFAIK, the mobile phone market doesn't really inspire quite the same brand loyalty at this point. I doubt there are many people buying a cheap Samsung who would automatically upgrade to mid-range Samsung next time rather than any other Android phone. A lot of people still just take whatever phone their operator offers them for free.
So, unfortunately, not a terribly good analogy.
"The only thing that matters is does Apple continue to make a profit on its iPhone business. How exactly does making a bigger market with less profit and diluting your brand image by selling cheap phones help?
Is BMW going out of business becuase its not selling some cheap junk ass £5 car to indians?"
One way though, towards Apples butt!
Of course BMW sell cheaper cars! This rant just highlights all fannybois bias toward Apple, you can not trust a fannybois comments.
(and to confirm, i'm not a fandroid or any other fking tag you want to catergorise me with)
They are called "Fiat". Check the company ownership. For Fiat, cutting Ferrari manufacture is a cost saving, not a loss of market share. The parent company has some rather good designs in current production, such as the 500 and the 4x4 Panda, which are rather successful.
This is what is called a "straw man argument". In the car industry it is more like "sell 10 million units and make money for the next 10-12 years on spares"(Fiat) versus "sell a few thousand units at most and make almost no money as most of them will spend their lives in a heated garage and do only a few thousand miles a year". (Ferrari). Five million Ferraris? No.
I don't know if it is still true, but at one time Morgan made their profit from spares. The longevity and high maintenance needs of a Morgan meant that they could follow a Rolls-Royce (not the cars) sales model: superb customer service up front, keep drawing revenue from spares and service for the next fifty years.
Agreed, as I understood it cars are the best "razors and blades" model. The car causes you to chose which spares, the spares are what drives your long term profits. Hence why companies that use as many interchangeable parts (and the complaints that you end up driving the same car with facelifts) makes it both more convenient for the consumer and more profitable for the company.
It's also why unofficial (fake) parts are a big problem. Also why your nice generic cars get nicked, since the bits can be chopped and flogged easily.
Ferrari is worth more as a brand than in car sales. Probably more profit in the merch :)
1.
In raw numbers, 52 million to 85 million over two years is good growth.
2.
The percentage of repeat purchasers is growing year-on-year. This is also a good thing.
3.
While expanding market-share is all well and good, I think Apple would prefer to have people upgrade and remain within the iOS ecosystem. The number of iOS users is hardly small (especially since that number is not just iPhone users).
4.
A new user and a repeat purchaser both have to buy an iPhone. Hardware sales is where Apple make the vast majority of their money.
A little bit of knowledge goes a long way...
This analyst is talking about growth in markets for investors to get a significant return on investment.
He is not bagging Apple's products.
He is making a case for bigger dividends.
A companies stock price is based on how much an investor can expect in return (either dividends or growth) over about 5 years.
Since historically Apple have no/low dividends the investors can only really expect a return through growth in share price which is only driven by larger profits == market share.
What this analyst is saying, is in order for Apple's stock price to keep its value/grow it needs to expand market share and with near total "high end" smartphone saturation the only market share Apple can pick up is in lower priced markets.
He is not bagging Apple's products.
He is making a case for bigger dividends.
That is all.
sheez.
They decided to start paying dividends like a normal company in like 2012. A lot of the value in Apple is it's whopping great cash pile, which it uses as a bargaining tool (lower price for upfront payment) and control (buying out certain tech), or if a tax holiday is given, shareholders.
So come a tax holiday, massive dividends. Until then, keep clamoring for more, and I suspect the board might even listen.
Did make me laugh when they where valued at more than Exxon.
If Apple can sell say 50m top-end iPhones a year and make $200-$250 profit on each, then they are talking $10b profit at least. To make the same $10bn more profit on a cheap phone, that say only makes a $50 margin, they'd have to sell 200m more. Which is a lot. And that's assuming that the sales of the cheaper one don't reduce the sales of their high profit one. After all, for each sale of a top-end phone they lose to a cheapie, they've got to sell another 3 or 4 cheapies to make up for the drop in profits.
I suppose the real threat is the lovely profits on the year old models. Where they only drop the price by about $150, and as components get cheaper it wouldn't surprise me if the margins don't actually go up. Certainly towards the end of year two.
On the other hand, they could decide that endless growth is a bloody stupid dream, of analysts and idiots who expect stocks to rise for ever and ever and richer and richer. And accept that the iPad and iPhone market are only a certain size. Then instead of spending management and research time chasing $50 a device, they could go into some other market and try to make huge margins at the top of that. Or just sit where they are, and try to keep themselves doing well in PCs, tablets, phones and iPods. Plus the even more profitable business of selling horrifically expensive cables and adaptors.
I'm not sure how 'premium' a brand Apple are, as they have become much more mass market than they used to be. But I think they do still have the reputation for the pretty shiny-shinies of above average quality, and so it would be a risk to their whole brand to do the cheaper phones. But maybe it would be worthwhile, if they can't find any other exciting markets to go into. It's hard to do any proper calculations, but I'd have thought it's more risk to their brand to do cheap phones, than to do nothing at all.
$130,000,000,000 CASH in the bank, means they are heading down the drain like your journalism reputation.
Apple is in the business of selling luxury electronics, not crap junk everyone can afford.
What will your next article be? "Mercedes will go out of business soon if they don't start making a $5,000 car so I can afford one!"
Do some research before writing your next article.
Fiat Group also makes Ferrari's
Volkswagon Group also make Lambo's and Bentley's and Skoda's.
BMW also make Rolls Royce Cars
It is all about brand differentiation.
The race to the bottom has not done HTC very well has it? They made a loss last Financial Year.
Crap Article. There will always be a place for high end goods. For some people these are what they buy every day. For others they are an occasional treat that buying the item makes you feel good.
If Apple continues to make good kit and slowly expands their product range then there is no reason why they can't continue to make good profits.
These frigging analysts. What a bunch of <redacted> tossers. ---------------------------->>>> for them
The fact Fiat makes Ferraris (and all the other examples) is only because of all the consolidation in the auto industry. Fiat didn't start out as Fiat and then create the Ferrari brand, nor the other way around. Ditto for VW and Lambo, and so on.
If one company owned both Apple and some no-name Chinese company making ultra low end $50 Android phones, it wouldn't mean Apple is operating at the low end of the market any more than Ferrari is.
Not that Ferrari and Apple are really an apt comparison. Ferrari is more like one of the crazy ultra luxury phone brands like Vertu. Both sell only a very small number of units, hundreds or low thousands, and pretty much if you don't make a million dollars a year or something close to it you probably will never consider owning either. They may make tens of thousands per car and thousands per phone, but because of the low volumes profit is measured in the tens of millions at best.
Apple's profit is measured in the tens of BILLIONS. Apple operates at the high end of the mass market, where successful sales are measured in 100+ million units a year. Its just that now people think 100+ million a year isn't good enough, when there are over a billion mobile phones sold each year. Problem is, most of those billion phones won't be sold for enough money to leave much profit at all for the seller. If lower priced Apple phones steal sales from their high end, they may make less overall profit. Market share isn't the goal, profit is.
BTW, please don't try to claim Apple needs a high market share to make money from iTunes. iTunes barely pays its operating costs. Apple runs it to support selling more hardware, not the other way around!
Apple already do a few things to make sure that a product's life is shortened. Non-removable battery, no expandable storage for phones. Soldered on CPUs, GPUs and memory for desktop computers. I also recall reading a story on Netkas that some Mac Pro's weren't issued with a required 64-bit EFI upgrade a few years ago when this was trivial to implement.
Of course they not the only ones. I'm reasonably sure they're the most aggressive users of this technique though. Apple devices are difficult to repair for a reason. They want you to buy a new one.
I admit it's a very cynical view, but I'm expecting iOS to be 64-bit only in the next few years. That way nearly everybody has to buy a new handset for the latest shiny. I'm also expecting a desktop OS upgrade that actually requires a modern GPU (or maybe more than 1) for a similar reason.
Personally I think El_Fev is right. Just keep shafting your existing userbase.
No, they do those things to achieve the look they want for the product (thin, light, etc.) That may not appeal to you, but it appeals to many.
I remember seeing some data that only a few percent of PCs ever had any sort of upgrade done, and almost all were to add memory. Probably much less common now that PCs tend to almost always ship with plenty of memory since it is so cheap. Almost no one upgrades the CPU. The needs/wants of the average Reg reader are not typical of the population at large.
The lack of replaceable battery may be a problem for those who are on their phone all day and don't have easy access to a charger. The solution for that? Those people shouldn't buy an iPhone. Or the growing number of Android phones that are following suit and have a non-removable battery for the exact same reasons as Apple.
If Apple's goal is planned obsolescence like you think, they're doing it wrong. You only need to look at the resale value of a two year old Mac laptop versus a two year old PC laptop that originally sold for the same price, and similarly check out say a two year old iPhone 4S versus a barely year old GS3 to see what I mean. How many people are still using a four year old Android phone? There are millions still using a slightly more than four year old 3gs - it just had its last OS update a few months ago, but unless there's some major exploit found for its browser, it'll be useful for years to come.
I suppose the non removable battery in the 3gs may start crapping out at some point, but they aren't at all difficult to remove. Anyone able to operate a screwdriver and Google should be able to figure out how to replace it. $4.99 online with free shipping, and comes with the tiny screwdriver needed to open the case.
Under Jobs, Apple kept high prices and pushed the whole 'aspirational brand' angle. It worked . They should instead continue to innovate (easier said than done) and increase their prices. The goal is to bring in a profit, not take over the world in terms of revenue or quantities sold.
The remainder of the market was always going to be from users of cheap feature phones anyway.
Furthermore, the report fails to take into consideration the upgrade cycle of phones and that the definition of rich is relative. Hitting the top 25% wealthiest of customers isn't going to change.
It seems to be a general believe within some (usually US) companies that companies need to grow in order to prosper. Something which I've always considered utter nonsense. Because what's the matter with being able to maintain a status quo in which the company can continue doing what it does yet without expansion?
The only thing which will hurt a company is the need to shrink. But that's something completely different from not expanding.
@ShelLuser, I completely agree with you regarding growth. Even divestment is not a bad thing as such - just like growth is not necessarily good.
If your competitors in a certain market, however, all grow and you stagnate, you're probably doing something wrong. The others are increasing their market share and hence power and their potential future revenue. There may be good reasons not to grow in such a situation, e.g. if growth is not sustainable due to macro economy, if cost ratio is too high and no potential of reducing it, etc. But generally, your shareholders would be very right not being happy with your stagnation.
So far, so good. Unfortunately, sometimes the growth of a company (or dismissed divestment) has (also) to do with the egos of the executives - "If I lose revenue (although for better profit) I will look daft on the golf course/in the club/where ever..."
While really old models aren't very sellable, iPhone 4 and 4S still fetch reasonable prices on the2nd-hand market and there are quite a few for sale on EBay and similar sites. So Apple doesn't need to introduce cheaper models to expand their market: They can rely on 2nd-hand sales to do so. While a 2nd-hand sale does not directly give Apple any income, sale of apps will do so over time, and purchasers of a 2nd-hand iPhone are likely to upgrade to a new model in the future.
Actually it's more than that - the older models are still on sale as new, so it's long been the case that Apple have had cheaper models (including much cheaper than the not cheap "C" - I wonder what else that letter might stand for). A few months ago, I saw the ancient 4 going for £15/month on contract.
I suspect that much of their growth has come from people being able to buy at lower prices. When you see quarterly sales figures for Apple, there's certainly not all from the latest model.
Well, the actual results show that Apples share of the market is dwindling all the time, now only 17% compared to Android's 70%+ so clearly all is not well. If Apple could understand that spending more money on quality-control and engineering instead of on marketing and paid fan-articles is just plain good sense then they might do better. Naturally the in-breeding effect of being a closed-shop only stifles innovation (never a strong point anyway), whereas diversity is of course the great strength of the Android world.
Recent Apple products have so many disastrous problems with both hardware and software the company is struggling to bring out fixes for them all. To many people Apple appears to have simply lost the plot!
So if their share of the market is down but they are selling more and more phones and making more and more money is that bad. More likely they basically (re)invented the smartphone we used now so at the start had a very high percentage of the market. Over time others follow / copy and product cheap phones at zero or low margins and at the same time people transition from basic candy-bar phones to full screen phones so the market has grown for this type of phone.
Apple are still doing VERY well thank you very much...
Interestingly this is exactly the same thing that was said of Nokia a few years ago - there the effect was even more dramatic, not only were their sales were growing, Symbian was also the number one platform until 2011 (which iphone has never been), but the media just reported how they were doomed because their share was dropping (the difference is that, unlike Apple, Nokia were the early starters of smartphones, at one point with as high as 60% or more share, where I don't think Apple have ever been much above 20% - they had some growth in the early years, but have now stagnated and may fall as Android races ahead). Instead back then Apple got all the praise, because they were growing, where as Nokia were falling, by market share. At one point in 2009, Symbian sales were increasing faster in absolute sales than iphones, but the market share still dropped, and so guess who got the positive publicity - statistics can be very misleading. I did wonder if this might turn round and bite Apple at some point - and indeed, it has.
Reinvented the smartphone? The 2007 model wasn't even a smart phone or feature phone (couldn't do apps). They've introduced some new features over the years, but by that, you could say every company has (re)invented the smartphone.
Further to what the second AC said, the share of profits needs to be considered. For the second quarter for the smartphone market, essentially, Apple and Samsung shared all the profit equally (see http://finance.yahoo.com/news/beyond-market-share-apple-iphone-152549596.html) – all other manufacturers either lost money or broke even.
Apple’s market share (i.e. handsets flogged) was down, IIRC, from 16% to 13% (roughly). That’s not something I’m sure the company will be sanguine about – although it’s worth remembering that people were waiting for the new iPhones – but its estimated profit for that quarter was $4.6 billion. Is it better to be in that position or that of a hypothetical company that’s seen it’s market share increase but is losing millions of dollars?
It's like any luxury brand. People want it *because* it's the most expensive. If they sold the iPhone 5S for £100, nobody would be interested.
The 5C isn't that much worse than the 5S, and considerably cheaper (relatively speaking), so logically, it should have sold like hot cakes. Nobody wants it, though.
The iPhone's most important feature has always been "look at me, I can afford to spunk £700 on a new phone".
The 5s is twice as fast as the 5c (look at the benchmarks), has a better and faster camera (10 full-resolution photos a second is nothing to sneer at), a fingerprint reader, an alu case and is only a little more expensive (if you look at the real price for unlocked iPhones).
I mean, if I were prepared to pay $549 for an 5c I would rather pay $649 for a 5s. I would consider a 5c if it was $299 maybe. It would fly off the shelves for that price and Apple stock would explode since THEN there would be confidence about Apple's future.
And mebbe not. There are undoubtedly people who buy iPhones because they like being seen with ones – thus the "champagne" color option on the 5S, but there are also people who like a phone that's part of Apple's software infrastructure (sorry, I forgot, this The Reg: "walled garden") and how seamlessly it hangs together across different classes of devices. As far as I can tell, they don't pay significantly more for that experience (in the US, at least) than people who buy top-end Android phones and deal with a different interface from every manufacturer that uses a different Android release.
And this discussion, and the original article, both appear to be missing something obvious: Apple still offers a smartphone so cheap it costs "nothing," except, of course, with most US carriers, two years of monthly bills. The phone, though, costs nothing (or US$0.99 from Verizon).
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Of course we should all be trashing the evil Apple mind control device with its flashing colour icons - after all who wants something that actually works?
No, it's definitely the super, duper Nokia 108 for me ... now at only $29 with an amazing hightec 0.3MP camera - available here http://www.nokia.com/global/products/phone/108 ... please don't flood the internet with your demands for them.
Well done Microsoft and Stephen Elop for buying up such an innovative cutting edge communications company at such a low price.
Samsung would hate Apple to drop it's prices. Face it - the average punter given the choice of an Apple iPhone or a Samsung at the same price is unlikely to buy the Samsung. Samsung can also charge high prices for it's high end phones because iPhones are that price - if Apple lopped £100 off each handset Samsung would have to do at least the same.
"What ruined Apple was not growth … They got very greedy … Instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision, which was to make the thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible … they went for profits. They made outlandish profits for about four years. What this cost them was their future. What they should have been doing is making rational profits and going for market share."
He said this in 1995 about the "old" Apple, but it sounds true again.
Market share is everything. Apple got its reputation and its clout with developers and third parties just via market share (back when the iPhone was the only smartphone that counted). Without market share all of this will shrink too, and then less and less people will be willing to pay the premium prices. This will take a while, but it will happen. Apple is still milking what they got when they nearly had monopoly market share in modern smartphones, but this is in the past now. Compare to the iPod (more than 70% market share) and the power Apple had to basically dictate conditions to the record companies in the ITMS. Compare this to the total lack of power Apple has with movies, books and other content now. Apps will follow.
The (lack of) confidence in Apple's future is easily visible in its stock prices. Profits are just an indication that you can sell your stuff for a good part more than it costs you to produce it NOW. Market share is an indication of the money you'll be able to make later. Apple's profits are outlandish but they'll cost them their future indeed.
Market share is everything.
While I agree with the general thrust of your argument I don't agree that market share is everything. Being in the right market is probably more important, though harder to define.
Along with many I'm not convinced that Apple has managed to maintain the same pace of development that it had a few years ago. However, it obviously still has a lot of talented and dedicated people and is continuing to develop interesting and attractive products. But let's face it: Apple maps, Siri, fingerprint activation are headline grabbers only.
Innovation is probably more rapid in other companies at the moment: Samsung Note's with split-screen software, ARM-based notebooks, etc. None of this is likely to mean imminent demise for Apple an, indeed, none of it is so extraordinary that Apple couldn't (re)capture markets by responding with similar improvements. Can you imagine an I-Pad pro which allow multiple windows or multi-core A7-based MacBook? I most certainly can and I can also imagine them flying off the shelves. But if something like them doesn't turn up relatively soon then other companies will start to look cool as well.
The problem is that what Apple is selling is devices and people more and more want just a hardware interface to services and content and peers using the same services.
Market share just defines which platform people will turn towards because there are the services and the content and other users. Look at MS and WP8: Google is trying to hold it down by not offering ANY of their apps for WP8, discontinuing ActiveSync support etc. and it works fine.
In China Apple has less than 5% market share. Great hardware or not, what kind of weight Apple has there with third-party developers and content providers and so on? Not much.
And all of this is very much the same as with the PC/Mac wars of old, just more so. Back then it was prices and software and hardware compatibility, now it's prices and hardware choices and services. Apple is doing the very same thing as back then (rake in money as long as it can) and it would be very strange to expect a different outcome.
Apple's long term vision should be "an iPhone in the hands of every chinese peasant" and nothing less. The 5c would have been a perfect (maybe the last) opportunity to go full steam for market share with a much smaller margin, even if it would have meant smaller profits for a while. It's not that Apple is lacking money after all. And believe me, a somewhat cheap 5c would have been a bestseller and Apple's stock would have exploded.
What irks me most here is the wasted potential. If you have only a handful of products to focus on and $30B laying around you can do things others can not. Not doing them is a sad thing then.
With carriers subsidizing the phones, the actual price only plays a small role in who can afford the phone. It's a matter of who can afford the call plans - and apparently a lot of people can. And by "a lot" I mean pretty muh anyone that can be considered in the middle class or above. That's probably a few billion potential customers right there.
No, Apple isn't running out of steam. They have a long ways to go before hitting any type of new user wall. Once they do, it's a matter of loyalty. If they can keep producing a device that works well and has appeal then they will be fine for a long long time.
But in most of the world carriers are not subsidizing phones. People buy phones and then buy connectivity. Or they pay much less monthly for a cheaper phone.
The US market is very special here and the fact that the price difference between the cheapest ("free") phone and the most expensive is just $199 artificially limits choice. Because the price delta between an iPhone 5s and a perfectly usable Android or WP8 smartphone actually can be as much as $400. In the US you're basically screwed either way, so it's almost clever to get the most expensive phone.
THIS is the most important reason Apple's market share is still much higher in the US than elsewhere. If carriers would offer a contract with an iPhone 5s costing you $199 or with a Nokia Lumia 720 and handing you $200 in cash along with it (which would reflect the actual prices) things would look very different very soon.
Only yesterday, we had an article with poor stats spinning things in favour of the iphone (sales in the US). I heard the claim that when there was next an article spinning things the other way, all the Android fanboys would be arguing the other way, taking the article as fact and using it to support their point of view.
Well er, where are they? Whilst the iphone article yesterday had lots of people trying to defend it, there appears to be a complete silence from people trying to defend this article. Maybe the truth is that some of us do care about accurate reporting, and if someone wants to argue for Android, there's a lot better arguments and evidence to use.
Ah yes ... DOOMED again !
Would these be the same bunch of analysts who said apple was DOOMED if they didn't release a netbook for less than 300$ ? Look how badly that worked out for them.
its amazing how often Apple are DOOMED and yet their sales and keep growing and their profits remain obscenely healthy.
<sigh>
I think the report is half right. At the moment, Apple sells itself as a premium hardware plus services company. I see a definite argument that this is unsustainable since the services, unlike the Apple hardware, are commodities. In this sense, Google and Amazon will, in the long term, be able to produce larger service offerings with greater economies of scale. Amazon is without a doubt the daddy, with respect to services.
With this in mind, I think Apple needs to do one of two things:
- Cheaper hardware, to expand revenues from its services
- Or exapnd its services to other platforms (i.e. iTunes, iBooks and so on running on Android, Windoes Phone, Kindle HD and so on).
I think the latter must be a more appealing option to Apple, since it avoids the risk of Apple cannibalising premium hardware sales.
This is the stupidest thing I have heard in a long time. I have been using apple since '97. Let me repeat... 1997. The reason apple makes gops of cash and is taking over the world is because once you are in the apple universe you have to upgrade every 3 yrs to keep it running. You have no choice, if you do not continue to upgrade your hardware and software every few years you will find your hardware getting so slow it's unusable and your software will no longer be compatible with anything. This is how they keep the income coming in. Secondly... they ARE getting cheaper.
Nanners, they have indeed got cheaper.
But I'm on a Mac from 2006. I'm running 10.7 not 10.8 as I haven't felt for hacking in a 64-bit EFI. However, non of the software I run needs 10.8.
You definitely don't need to upgrade every 3 years, at least not with the mac line. With a Windows device thats a totally different story. Those who continue running Windows hardware older than 3 years, have not either upgraded their software. How many still runs WinXP? How many still run Win7?
It's a totally different picture when you look at market Apple has. One big reason is that it's cheap to upgrade software with Apple devices. However mag users did upgrade much more than their windows counterparts in the days where a OSX upgrade costed $150. The only reason for this difference I can find is that Apple hardware actually is good enough to run software made years after the hardware was introduced. With the cheap PC's that could be a totally different story, as they are "designed for Windows XP, Vista, Win7 etc etc.
There seems though to be a change in this trend for Windows 8 or later. PC users seems to have become happy with updating the software rather than go for new hardware each time they update. I just hope it will have an affect on the corporate market. We just recently upgraded from XP to Win7, and many have not yet got their update.
PS. I've used Apple since the late 80 when I was a kid. Can't say for sure but somewhere between 1988-89.
The first was an Mac SE, then later a SE/30.
I am not seeing the cheapness of the Mac as a necessarily good thing. The Quality is not what it used to be, the 68k era was quality wise the best time to use Macs.
Cost is more about TCO than initial purchase price. iPhones have a much better residual value. You buy it today for £500 and it's worth half that or more to sell / trade in after 2 years and worth far more than Galaxy whatever phones. As soon as a new 'better' Android phone comes out the 'Galaxy' brand from Samsung will drop in value even more.
If Apple ever brings out a smartphone with a competitive functionality and screen quality it will be seen as sign of failure.
Treat them mean and they will always be wanting next years model.
Or is it last years Android model, what with the 2014 iPhone sounding suspiciously like a Nexus 7 clone?
The screen that Apple uses in the iPhone 5 series is one of the brightest available on the market and it has the most accurate colors by a pretty wide margin (only the HTC One is anywhere close).
Hopefully Apple will never release phones with "competitive" (i.e., inferior) screens.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/15
Allan Denman,
You have no clue of the subject of screen quality, or you go by some weird benchmarks. Here the Apple line excels almost everything on the market.
The benchmarks I look at when it comes to a mobile phone screen as regarding to quality is based on;
Color accuracy
Touch accuracy
Touch latency
To find references on Touch latency Google: TouchMarks Agawi
Here is one reference which talks Color and a bit more http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_S4_ShootOut_1.htm
I cannot find a fresher test than this on Touch accuracy, this one is 3 years old. I expect the Android phone makers have caught up with the iPhone 3G(s?). I do not expect any of the newer generations of iPhone to have dropped in this regards, i expect them to be the same or slightly improved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR1sJhtgkK4
I've just got home from sitting in the waiting-room at my local A&E for an hour.
A chap came and sat beside me with his mate and a woman who was obviously in pain (not that that's relevant to the story). His phone goes off.
Out come 3 iPhones. one 5 shaped and two 4 shaped, then his mate pulls out his phone - another iPhone 4.
Judging by the clothes they were all wearing (I know, don't judge etc...) these guys were ordinary folks with a Tesco Bag-For-Life, no designer labels or high-end sneakers.
I've also noticed recently that more text messages I send are in blue bubbles than before. They have probably doubled in the last 6 months or so. (for those not familiar with the blue bubble on an iPhone, it means that the message is going to another iphone via imessage rather than as an SMS (when the bubble would be green). I wouldn't class the people I'm texting as being rich either (well perhaps one or two, everybody has to have at least one rich friend).
So yes, In my opinion the analyst is talking out of it.
At last, somebody who uses his eyes to see who owns iPhones. It is the chavs who have the iphones 'cos they are status seekers and at £30 a month it is less than an evening at Weatherspoons .
And of course iPhones are good design with an easy interface and distinctive logo branding so the brand is differentiated and you are then "somebody" by owning a logo. Nike trainers - anybody? It is the great success of marketing iPhones that they are already down market but nobody realizes.
Sorry, you would say that about any successful product. It is very easy to use the 'chav' tag on any product, be it Nike, iPhone, Burberry or Ford, especially when it is used with such a semblance of sneering, as you seem to here.
Do I presume that a SkypoMicroNok phone is not 'chav'?
"a growing percentage of Apple users are ditching iPhones for Android phones"
I think this may be true in your environment, but the statistics are pretty much saying the opposite. First time smartphone buyers tend to buy Android, but after that they tend to buy iPhones.
Luckily these days you can have both. For me a (smallish, pretty, comfortable, if limited) iPhone in my pocket and a Nexus 7 in my bag works very well. And should I get a Nexus 5 (provided it doesn't have a shitty camera and no battery life again) I certainly will use the opportunity to sell off the Nexus 7 and get an iPad mini instead. Having more than one device with the same OS is just wasted potential, isn't it?
Indeed, I find email, messaging, and the camera to be superior on the iPhone vs. Android phones. Basically all the things I do with a phone, not a tablet.
I use a tablet for reading long web pages, Kindle books, and the Economist. For these activities, Android is just as good as iOS.
iPhone for a phone and Nexus 7 for a tablet strikes me as a pretty ideal combination.
I don't buy the premise of the report. Apple has made VERY expensive (frankly overpriced) computers for decades. People will complain they are short on cash for EVERYTHING ELSE while at the same time showing off a (usually) $1000+ Apple computer they've just bought. People buy them like clockwork. A lot of people buy the ipads and iphones like clockwork despite the very high cost too. This will of course limit Apple's market share, but it doesn't mean the existing market will suddenly collapse on them. If their market share DOES start collapsing (i.e. because of some problem in future products) then making them cheaper would likely not help either.
Lots of Apple haters spout off about these hypothetical hipster fanboys who trip over themselves to spend every last dime on the latest Apple hardware but I don't see it.
I live in a relatively affluent neighborhood and most of the iPhone users I see are still using 4s and 4Ss even though the 5 has been on the market for a while.
When I go to coffee shops, probably half the MacBooks I see are the plastic variety, i.e., the base model that Apple stopped selling a while ago. Sometimes I see a black MacBook which I believe Apple stopped making circa ~2008. Most of the aluminum MacBooks I see are the 13" model with an optical drive, i.e., not the nice new expensive retina models.
Maybe you live in a poor area? I remember reading a sociology article a while ago about how poor people are more likely to buy expensive, highly visible things as status symbols (designer sneakers, etc.).
Yes ... but they did have to move the MAC product line from what were to all intensive purposes proprietary PowerPC processors to commodity Intel processors. The volumes they were shipping were not commensurate with the wafer pricing they needed or were the ongoing development costs for the PowerPC processors to compete with the Intel x86 processors.
They have managed to sidestep this issue to some extent in the iPhone market, by introducing the IPad sector which essentially leverage the technology/devices developed for the iPhone... But guess what, the competition have also followed suit (plus a plethora of new low cost entrants) in the Android Tablet market.
The dominant costs will be the main processor system-on-chip (SOC) and the screen in these devices. The cost paid to the silicon foundry for the manufacturing of the SOC device is one thing, the cost of developing the proprietary chip must also be recovered. It is hideously expensive to develop/design deep sub-micron SOC devices! Also if there is a screw up in the next generation design which necessitates either several respins or a major redesign, then they can find themselves one generation behind in technology/performance, which could leave them very vulnerable.
It will become increasingly hard to keep ahead of the competition who leverage high volume low cost commoditised SOC devices. They need to be able to develop a commodity sector to utilise their own silicon to achieve low cost wafer prices to match the competition whilst not damaging the value of the Apple brand.
Maybe they simply need to run IOS (one generation behind) on a commodity SOC and sell/license it to second/third tier handset manufacturers?
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it's called the iPhone - according to some sources it cost less than £150 for all the parts, the construction (using under paid workers on contracts with a 'non-suicide' clause), the packaging, and the P&P to anywhere on the planet - the rest is pure profit - so they could sell it for under £200 and still make a profit
I'm sure NTC, Nokia, et al, also have a massive mark-up. Hands up how many bought a sub £200 phone for £500 ?
I read several comments saying it is OK to focus on the high end in technology. Well ... there is a problem with such a strategy and it all revolves around silicon chip wafer pricing. If you develop your own proprietary chip set for your product, then you need to achieve two major milestones in the project.
1) Buy enough wafers, to ensure that the silicon foundry is comfortable setting up the production and test equipment to warrant it's production time slot.
2) Have a wafer volume throughput that matches your competition in the market to ensure that your bill of materials for your device is not disproportionately more expensive so that either you are unable to match price or live with the inflated wafer costs even operating at higher margin product selling price.
The costs of designing the SOC (System On Chip) are in the 10's or millions of dollars, plus IP (Intellectual Property) licensing costs, verification (lots of!), cost per seat of EDA tools, software development, product testing, compliance tests etc.
So the big issue that Apple will have, is trying to recoup all the SOC and product development costs on a total volume of product sales much less than the competition who will have a reduced development cost by several vendors sharing the same SOC device. In time, as the market matures, a semiconductor company (usually fabless) will produce a device product family which will satisfy the volume segment of the market. Manufacturers using a standard OS (e.g. Android) on a commodity chip set from a fabless semiconductor company will represent the largest volume share of the market and will be able to operate on thinner R&D margins, focussing their spend on deals with operators and consumer marketing/promotions. It may not happen this year or next, but within the next 5 years it probably will as the smartphone market matures.
The only way this will not happen, is if there is either some breakthrough new patent protected feature on the high end products which renew customer demand to such an extent that the users feel compelled to upgrade from today's smartphone to some ultrasmartphone. (akin to moving from a feature phone to a smartphone). What could the killer new feature be though? It is getting harder each time for the product designers/app developers to bring out an absolutely must have new feature. Thinner/Bendy/Bigger Screen? Faster Processor? Killer App? .... ????
Ultimately the market will saturate just like what we are seeing in the laptop PC market. When technology is good enough and it lasts long enough, there will be a temptation not to bother upgrading unless there is a financial benefit in doing so. Certainly there will be a large hand-me-down sector (to younger siblings or parents/grandparents etc.) which will erode demand for new phones for new customers. The only big Ace up the sleeve of the phone tech vendors, is that the phone has become synonymous as a fashion accessory which is almost like the pedestrian version of the Executive car. Years ago, certain types would lob their BMW/Audi/Merc/Jag keyfob on the bar when ordering drinks. Now they just pull out the latest greatest smartphone to make the same statement.
So Apple should ideally maintain their Exec car status versus the Ford/GM competitors along with their ecosystem (app store and apple stores etc) and also find ways to create more wafer volume for the custom chips they develop. So another brand which is lower end, but essentially uses the same core SOC devices (which could be speed reduced or feature inhibited), would allow them to enjoy lowest possible wafer pricing whilst still enjoying high margins on Apple branded products. Rather than creating their own brand, they would be better off licensing the chip(s) to a commodity sector companies operating in an emerging market Apple wishes to develop. So for instance they could bundle the previous generation of IOS with the chip so that Apple are always one step ahead on the latest and greatest. They SHOULD never offer a low cost Apple phone as it would destroy brand value. Overtime it may transpire that 50% of their revenues would actually come from licensing their older technology to the commodity sector. That way they keep their shareholders happy, the fanbois have the latest greatest, the wafer foundries are happy (more wafers in the fab(s)), new markets are developed ....
Will they do this? Hmmm maybe not ... arrogance usually follows success and failure usually follows arrogance. When you are at the top of the mountain you tend to spend a disproportionate amount of effort throwing boiling oil down the mountain side, rather than building another mountain away in the distance.
Back in the days of CRT TV, Sony were busy throwing boiling oil at anyone attempting to ascend mount Trinitron, whilst meanwhile Samsung were building a new mountain in the distance call LCD TV.
What a pathetic, blinkered little person Toni Sacconaghi, senior analyst with Bernstein Research, must be.
Listen Toni, "pile it high, sell it cheap" is only one of very many ways businesses can make money.
Look back at Apple's history. They've made their money from innovating leading edge products that ooze "I-want-one" appeal. Apple hasn't done too badly with this approach; It's doing a bit better than Bernstein Research, for example.
Can Apple continue to produce leading edge products that people will lust after? Now THAT is a good question to discuss.
Is the Author seriously concerned about whether Apple "Want to stay in business"? I don't think there is any danger of them going out of business. Yes the iPhone has lost its luster (thus the need to add faux gold), but this of the most successful/profitable companies in history. They aren't going away any time soon.