iphone today vs. 2 year old phones
apple just has to impress people with 2+ year old phones - not tech bloggers that stare at specs all day long and have zero intent to purchase and consider 2011 to be nothing but a memory, when in fact it is the current reality for a lot of smartphone users.
what most reviewers don't realize is that a lot of markets are on 2yr subsidized plans - ok i get it: a bunch of asia doesn't work that way. fine. but most of Apple's markets do and eventually asia will move towards subsidies as they become more service-oriented, but that's a different story altogether - in any case, regardless of subsidies, there just isn't a huge market for people that want to purchase a smartphone every 3 or 6 or even 12 months. people with 2 or 3 year old phones is likely the target market....think back, this time 2 years ago....the iphone 4 8gb was $99 subsidized...with your subsidy up for renewal/getting antsy regardless, today your $99 gets you the iphone 5C at 16gb...that is a quantum leap ahead of the iphone 4 and 2x more storage -- for the same $99. that differential is obviously worth the $99. So the 2yr+ is whom apple is trying to impress...
Apple needs to keep this strategy - it is very repeatable and profitable. But of course, if bloggers and wallstreet were the ones running apple they would put it in an under-pricing, over-serving death spiral like every other tech company that lacked imagination when it came time to properly serve the user.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
