Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales

#41

Post by microtonal » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 7:03 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #32

jseliger wrote: post #2

I'm not surprised sales are weak: the regular iPhone 7 seems to offer few improvements over the 6s or 6, with only the 7+'s camera being a really notable differentiator.

Better camera, better screen, faster, waterproof, more ram, Taptic Engine, nicer finish options, more durable home button, and on and on. It's a better phone in almost every measurable way.

And still, for many daily users the differences are not going to be spectacular. At least not 'drop 700 Euro on it' spectacular. So I guess many people went from a 2 year to a 3-4 year upgrade cycle.

Re: Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales

#42

Post by tajen » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 7:03 PM UTC

kjsthree wrote: post #20

My Christmas wish is that sales tank to the point of triggering serious introspection. This would obviously bring back the headphone jack, and hdmi/magsafe to the mbp. ;)

Do you know any company which recovered from introspection? It feels to me like they all tank, whether it be Yahoo! or Nokia. My Christmas wish would be to have enough competition that we'd have a real choice for privacy, performance, jack/hdmi/magsafe/Fn keys, and open-source. "Be the change you seek", they say.

Re: Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales

#43

Post by rhino369 » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 7:03 PM UTC

jarcoal wrote: post #22

narrator wrote: post #12

Are we at the end of an era computing wise or is it just Apple? I wonder if computing technologies great transformation of our society is coming to an end. I also thought this in about 1993 and then again in the mid 2000s, so I'm probably wrong again. Maybe AI will be the new killer app that drives the next wave of upgrades.

Mobile is maturing and consumer upgrade cycles are starting to slow down because of it. So yes, I would say we are at the end of an era.

I'd also add that the move away from carrier subsidies may be slowing the upgrade cycle. We had an artificial 2 year upgrade cycle just because that was when your carrier would give you a subsidy.

But now I'm sitting here with a 2.5 year phone that I don't feel like replacing for 700 bucks out of pocket.

Re: Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales

#44

Post by erikb » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 7:03 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #11

erikb wrote: post #8

I have an iPhone 6S since its first month. Just thought, you know, test it once. But I always look jealously at my friends who run Android phones for half the price. You can just do more with Androids, it's more efficient, the keyboard is more efficient, apps can run concurrently, and to my surprise even the cameras seem to be way better. Besides the brand I really don't know what reason there is to buy iPhones. So t…

Everyone has their own opinion and that's fine, but saying Android is more efficient than iOS just is demonstrably untrue that I'm not entirely convinced you typed that with a straight face. There's also only one phone that has a camera as good as the iPhone, and that's the newly released Pixel. Every other camera falls short in independent testing.

About the camera: That's what I thought as well. So I presented my phone proudly in a bar to friends, all of them having Android. We shot some photos, and each and every photo was better than on the 6S. 100% and live.

About the efficiency: Agreed that it's a hard thing to argue. But the reason is less that it's not measureable, but because it's hard to convince people of efficiency that they don't even deem possible. Best example for me is Vim vs a random simple text editor. People who use the latter are hard to convince of why Vim is way more efficient, since they can't even imagine what you can do with Vim. In the same regard I know few, really few people, who even try to achieve some level of efficiency on their phones. But in fact since I have paid for the iPhone now I would love to be convinced from the opposite myself. So if you have some neat efficiency tricks (e.g. how to get a typing speed of not lifting your finger at all + good word guessing on an iPhone) I'm happy to admit being wrong.

Re: Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales

#45

Post by baldfat » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 7:04 PM UTC

rqebmm wrote: post #31

Normally I'm not a fan of clickbait headlines, but the authors totally whiffed on "Apple to decimate iPhone production in the new year"

Finally the historical use of the word Decimate. To remove 1 in 10.

> The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth" - http://www.dictionary.com/browse/decimate

In Ancient Rome if a Roman Army was to be disciplined for desertion or mutiny they would be decimated and 1 in 10 soldiers would be killed by the commanding officer. They would use lottery system to choice the ones to be whipped to the point of death and then beheaded. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)#cite_n...

Re: Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales

#46

Post by shmerl » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 7:04 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #34

shmerl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there is simply more competition today, and market balances things out. Also, Apple grew too comfortable and stopped pushing forward. It was only a matter of time for this to happen.

Also, more in general, all the obvious improvements to the current smartphone form factor/concept have been made now: capacitive touch screen (iPhone), retina display (iPhone 4), fingerprint unlock/secure element (iPhone 5s), always listening Siri + Force Touch (iPhone 6s), plus huge improvements in CPU/GPU speed with all models. Where force touch was already quite a marginal improvement. I have an iPhone 5S and my p…

There is always room for improvement in hardware and software. And such high end handsets were never meant to be replaced very often, so the drop in sales is not due to technology saturation, but due to more competition becoming better than Apple.

Re: Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales

#47

Post by untog » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 7:04 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #26

lvspiff wrote: post #18

For someone who waited nearly a month to get my iphone7 (as an upgrade from a galaxy s3) due to inventory being unavailable I'm going WTF - sluggish sales? then why did i have to wait so long? But then at the same time I compare my iphone 7 to friends iphone 6S models and realize...oh the only difference is the headphone jack if you dont do x,y,z...no wonder they aren't selling too many

Better screen, better camera, better external speakers, added waterproofing, and faster. I'm not sure what people were expecting when they say nothing has changed.

Out of that list, the waterproofing is the only one that really stands out. The rest are minor, iterative improvements. We're used to Apple making larger leaps on even years (4,5,6) then iterative improvements in odd years (4S, 5S, 6S). But this year they broke that - the 7 feels more like an iPhone 6SS than a 7. Yes, it's better, but it's not "full price for a new phone" better.

Re: Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales

#48

Post by revelation » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 7:05 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #23

itg wrote: post #7

The numbers coming out of Apple next quarter will be interesting. iPhone 7 has been underwhelming and reception to the latest MacBooks Pros has been mostly negative. And if sales are on a downhill trajectory, I wonder what the response inside of Apple will be.

Where are you getting that impression? My understanding that was both the iPhone 7 and new MacBooks were the fastest-selling models of their respective product lines that Apple had ever released?

As self-reported by Apple according to unknown criteria. We don't know yet.

But if you look at the development of iPhone sales [1], they pretty much peaked in 2015. Q1 2016 was only a rounding error away from the top in 2015 and YoY 2016 sales are very much down. That doesn't seem like a hot growing market anymore.

[1]: http://www.statista.com/graphic/5/263401/global-apple-iphone...

Re: Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales

#49

Post by Bud » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 7:06 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #39

matthewmacleod wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The removed it because it was a proprietary port and felt that the market was better served in the long term by eliminating this kind of special case. I like MagSafe, but it's not really that big a deal.

> The removed it because it was a proprietary port Apple is not shy when it comes to using proprietary ports - so I don't really buy this argument. We can look at the iPhone 7 and it's proprietary non-USB connector as clear evidence they don't mind running proprietary connectors.

>Apple is not shy when it comes to using proprietary ports - so I don't really buy this argument.

There was not a single proprietary port on the old MB Pro, except for MagSafe, which isn't really even a port, but instead a power interface.

Zero.

Re: Apple to slice iPhone production 10% due to sluggish sales

#50

Post by baldfat » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 7:06 PM UTC

itg wrote: post #7

The numbers coming out of Apple next quarter will be interesting. iPhone 7 has been underwhelming and reception to the latest MacBooks Pros has been mostly negative. And if sales are on a downhill trajectory, I wonder what the response inside of Apple will be.

> the latest MacBooks Pros has been mostly negative

To developers to the hipsters they are "FANTASTIC!"

Apple doesn't think they need developer specific tools. Personally 90% of what I ever see is Apple products at Open Source conventions and developer conferences.