iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs • Hacker News Board

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#241

Post by vacri » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 11:20 PM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #31

joezydeco wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providers have switched from "free upgrades every 2 years" to a plan cost and a monthly phone cost, so people now really know how much their phone costs--and many would rather save the $30 a month than upgrade their phone. Wasn't this why Apple was quietly introducting the "iPhone Upgrade Program"? http://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program Seems like Apple realized the future will be a place where every…

In Australia you always had to disclose the phone cost in a contract. People still keep upgrading phones.

It's not exactly front-and-center, though. There's some miniscule print that says how much the phone is, whereas the overall monthly cost is in giant numbers.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#242

Post by rpgmaker » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 11:20 PM UTC

ericabiz wrote: post #4

I run a repair shop. We've repaired over 3,000 Apple devices for customers. We are always chatting with our customers, so we get a ton of feedback from them about what they're doing with their phones. We hear a few things consistently: 1) Providers have switched from "free upgrades every 2 years" to a plan cost and a monthly phone cost, so people now really know how much their phone costs--and many would rather save…

I really hope #2 gets traction. It's been disappointing to see the SE not do as well as I wanted it to. I'm not an iPhone owner myself but I'm hoping the SE popularizes the "small" form factor phone again.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#243

Post by partiallypro » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 11:21 PM UTC

Sales faltering...just wait until the margins dip. Hardware margins the size Apple has enjoyed are incredibly rare and never have lasted with any company, period. Their hardware margins are on par, or even above many software vendors, which is just unsustainable. It's a great product, but the upgrade cycle is lengthening, and margins are going to fall. Same happened to the PC, same started to happen with the tablet, and the same will happen to the phone market.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#244

Post by cloudjacker » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 11:22 PM UTC

epoch1970 wrote: post #210

cloudjacker wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Physical limits on some aspect of the system must intervene and impose a new law. Just because Apple didn't become the first trillion dollar public company by marketcap (lets assume that chinese bank ipo for a brief second didn't count), doesn't mean that it would have broken a physical limit on the system. There was a time not long ago when 100 billion companies didn't exist and there was a time when private ventu…

Might inflation due to quantitative easing, for example, be at least partially responsible for the higher valuations we see today?

Partially, Apple's metrics aren't that outlandish though. You could just use the age old price to earnings ratio and see it isn't wildly inflated, they make bank and speculators value it at 11 times said bank right now

The higher valuations of private companies IMO has little to do with quantitative easing. Despite any bubble talk, very little funding actually goes into these private companies. The S&P 500 returns nearly 1 trillion a year to shareholders via dividends, VCs put like 50 billion into these high growth startups.

Low interest rates from quantitative easing might contribute greatly, but I wouldn't say the inflation targets have much to do with it.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#245

Post by zyngaro » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 11:22 PM UTC

The most innovative thing Apple can do now to reverse the course of things is to decrease their outrageously high prices (especially in Europe) and phase out these ridiculous 16GB models.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#246

Post by martinald » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 11:23 PM UTC

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #16

revelation wrote: post #5

Are 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…

I'd say battery life. I moved to Android for this reason. I can get a phone with around ~4000mAh battery vs 1715mAh on the 6S or 2750mAh on iPhone6S+.

Furthermore, my phone supports Qualcomm's Quick Charge tech which means plugging in the phone for a few minutes gives it a lot more charge.

Between these two points; my phone very very rarely runs out of battery. When I was on iOS it'd be almost every day.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#247

Post by alphonsegaston » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 11:23 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #85

cowpewter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPad Pro is actually really awesome for artists. Pro + Pencil is a better experience than a Wacom Cintiq display, and it's a whole tablet for about the same price point, not just a display.

Any experience on the Microsoft Surface? It seems it works very well for artists also.

It was alright to use when they were putting in the Wacom digitizers. The N-Trig ones just aren't up to snuff. All my artist friends now just want an iPad Pro that runs full-blown Photoshop.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#248

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 11:25 PM UTC

Nicholas_C wrote: post #155

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget "nationwide", China is currently getting ready to drop like a cliff. That they are buying fewer iPhones isn't surprising.

Now? Next month? Next year? People have been saying that (and betting on that) for quite a while.

The government has decided to keep inflating the bubbles with capital injections that wind up temporarily keeping stocks afloat and ultimately wind up feeding insane real estate bubbles. This has gone on more or less for the last few years, starting with stimulus in 2008. Retail is already taking a huge hit on the ground (not just iPhone sales have dropped off), and once those bubbles pop...well, the government will do anything it can to keep that from happening, including inflating them higher (which can't work forever, right?).

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#249

Post by _nullandnull_ » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 11:28 PM UTC

stouset wrote: post #236

_nullandnull_ wrote: post #127

I'm not surprised. I think Apple underestimated the demand for the iphone SE 64 GB. Its been out of stock in most stores since it was released. Apple's shareholders should be asking why can't anyone buy it in a store? Also many people don't want wait two weeks to receive their phone when they buy it online.

People can't buy it in a store, because like pretty much every model that came before it, they're massively supply constrained. They've gotten better about it, but there's only so much you can do when you're producing a high-tech item being purchased tens of millions of times per week globally.

Looks like the SE didn't matter. Interesting note from Apple conference call. "2:11 pm iPhone SE not included in these results, as it launched after the end of the quarter, but demand has been very strong. Demand exceeds supply, but we're working hard to meet demand. iPhone SE puts us in strategic plan to attract new customers."

Source - http://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/26/q2-2016-earnings/

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#250

Post by rpgmaker » Tue, Apr 26, 2016, 11:28 PM UTC

mjfern wrote: post #108

bsirkia wrote: post #47

Incredible 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 "oth…

There is something fundamentally wrong with our system that "growth" is used as the main metric for assessing business success. It's growth for the sake of growth (and more $), and not deploying business to solve hard customer problems and to make the world a little bit better.

> There is something fundamentally wrong with our system that "growth" is used as the main metric for assessing business success.

Not only that, if there is no growth in the next few quarters Apple will be considered to be in "bad shape" which is insane when you consider the size of the company and its revenues.