tl;dr it's hard to find lots of new people every quarter who can afford $600 phones.
Specially outside US and other first level countries.
iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
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Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#42Are we past peak-smartphone or is this just noise from model release schedules? It took PCs 20+ years to get good enough, smartphones managed the same in much less than 10 it seems.
now that phones are quite fast and have good cameras, what is the main driver towards upgrading? so that you go from 300ppi to 500ppi? not going to make much of a difference and for most people not worth the upgrade costs. The only issue is that phone manufacturers have even more of an incentive to bloat the OS more and more (and make it slower and slower on old models) and to deprecate it faster (on older models) so…
in general, hardware improvements will drive new swanky software, and make computing on smartphones closer to a first class citizen (remember motorola's laptop+phone dock, where the phone powers the laptop?).
another big pain point is battery (and battery consumption). still waiting on hardware (and software in conjunction) to get more efficient. you'll remember how power hungry PCs were in the beginning and how much better they are now (laptops notably).
feels to me like we still have many years to go, and many more "big" technology investments.
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#43I think we just reached peak smartphone. What's next?
no phones
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
yet for the most part PCs dropped significantly in price but smartphones seem to be holding the 400+ range which is still woefully overpriced for most of the phone buying populace because not only are you putting out 400 bucks but usually under obligation to send forty to eighty more a month. That is a good chunk of the the lower and middle classes.
The PC have not dropped significantly in price. High end gaming PC (that you build yourself) always costed about 1500-2000$. It is just that the majority of tasks could be done in lower and lower segments of the market.
http://i.imgur.com/Lng3MQB.jpg
I'd say that computers have come down in price.
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#45I think we just reached peak smartphone. What's next?
More importantly in this context, will Apple be the company to bring it to us? Is it the watch? Interesting point for the company.
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
3D Force Touch was one of those features I feel would have only caught on, if it was one of the original iPhone features. Tacking it on later, with little to no support in apps, makes it forgetware. I actually really like the functionality, and I completely forget it exists. There needs to be some type of small indicator reminder that a button HAS 3D touch.
To me its real problem is that it's almost indistinct from long-press. Combine that with Apple's poor UX discoverability (I'm looking at you, swipe-from-the-side-to-see-iMessage-timestamps!) and 3D Touch is basically useless.
>> "To me its real problem is that it's almost indistinct from long-press."
Are you saying this as someone who actually uses the feature? Because in my experience a long press and 3D are very distinct. In fact 3D touch makes it quite difficult to long press on home screen icons to delete them.
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#47Incredible that this is the first time in 13 years that Apple hasn't posted quarterly growth. I'm sure there will be lots of "Apple has lost its ability to innovate" articles based on this, but growing for the last ~52 straight quarters is insane.
And I don't think one quarter without growth is enough evidence to conclude "Apple may be reaching the saturation point among potential customers in some countries" or "other smartphone makers using Google’s Android operating system continue to challenge the company with powerful, lower-price devices."
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#48I think we just reached peak smartphone. What's next?
Some combination of wearables, AR/VR, IoT, and consumer 3D printing.
The thing is a) those are all a few years out, b) they're interconnected. VR will happen first because it's got an obvious path to a large consumer base. That will lay groundwork for AR, which is probably the actual Next Big Thing. Wearables/IoT/3D printing are really an extension of the miniaturization/customization of longstanding technologies, but are all experiencing severe growing pains (wearables : size/batteries, IoT : cost, 3D Printing : materials).
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
3D Force Touch was one of those features I feel would have only caught on, if it was one of the original iPhone features. Tacking it on later, with little to no support in apps, makes it forgetware. I actually really like the functionality, and I completely forget it exists. There needs to be some type of small indicator reminder that a button HAS 3D touch.
To me its real problem is that it's almost indistinct from long-press. Combine that with Apple's poor UX discoverability (I'm looking at you, swipe-from-the-side-to-see-iMessage-timestamps!) and 3D Touch is basically useless.
Yeah, Force Touch has really compounded their problems of overloaded and undiscoverable UX. I realized this recently when trying to tell a family member how to rearrange their home screen icons. It used to be "hold down an icon until it wiggles, then drag it". Now it's "hold down an icon, but not too hard, until it starts wiggling. What do you mean there's a popup?! Oh you pressed too hard. Tap somewhere else to close the popup and try holding down an icon again."
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#50Are we past peak-smartphone or is this just noise from model release schedules? It took PCs 20+ years to get good enough, smartphones managed the same in much less than 10 it seems.
Yes, you better assume the smartphone golden era is already over. It is super hard for the manufactures to get people hyped for their new gears.