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Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

fortune.com

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Re: Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

#61

Post by newscracker »

aiofgniaotnio wrote: post #29
dkrich wrote: post #21

I think market analysts continue to miss the mark on this story. What I keep hearing over and over are variations of "people are turned off by the $1,000 price tag." I think this is a complete misread. People don't pay $1k for an iPhone because it's the practical thing to do. If practicality is the #1 priority for phone shoppers, they will simply buy a 7 or 8. I don't think this comprises the top of the market, thoug…

>People buy the X because it's a status symbol and they want to be seen with it. I find this aspect of the tech industry so gross that I'm considering changing careers. Building a new tool that makes people's lives better is great, but much of the time it just becomes a status symbol. No one should feel bad for owning a machine that's a few years old but does everything they need. I'm not convinced that consumer gadg…

> No one should feel bad for owning a machine that's a few years old but does everything they need. I'm not convinced that consumer gadgets fill a real need any more rather than just being new and shiny for the sake of being new and shiny.

I disagree that consumer gadgets, especially phones, don't fill a real need anymore. We have at least a good four or five years, minimum, for a lot more to be done in that form factor. It may not necessarily be new sensors, but significant improvement in what's available now. Things like AR and VR have quite a while to mature and bring about more practical use cases than we see now, and smartphones and devices associated with them will be the ones leading the charge there.

Re: Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

#62

Post by ex3ndr »

Jonnax wrote: post #22
olegkikin wrote: post #8

What do people buy $1000 smartphones for? For gaming I can get a pretty good gaming PC for that amount, or Xbox One X with a VR headset. I've never seen anybody do anything really cool with their phone - everyone browses the internet, checks the email, does chats/videochats, maps, take photos, and some silly mobile gaming. I do that all on my sub $200 phone.

Because it's a nice device? Fast, sleek, good camera, stylish etc Why do people buy nice cars instead of the cheapest, most economical models?

To be honest more expensive car are miles ahead of a cheap one in many ways: usability, drive support systems, safety, etc. After owning fresh Mercedes C-Class i started to fear economical cars much much more than crazy BMW next to me since the last one is most likely will be able to stop in the case of emergency than a cheaper one.

Re: Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

#63

Post by snuxoll »

olegkikin wrote: post #8

What do people buy $1000 smartphones for? For gaming I can get a pretty good gaming PC for that amount, or Xbox One X with a VR headset. I've never seen anybody do anything really cool with their phone - everyone browses the internet, checks the email, does chats/videochats, maps, take photos, and some silly mobile gaming. I do that all on my sub $200 phone.

Why does anybody buy an $800 graphics card when it will be obsolete in under two years?

Because they plan on dealing with it being outpaced by newer hardware but not by enough to care about upgrading for a generation or two in most cases.

This is why I’m still rocking my iPhone 7+, I don’t know if I’ll upgrade to the 9 when it comes out at this point because the phone still runs great - just like I plan on skipping Volta since I just bought a 1080 Ti and there’s not a game in the world that taxes it enough yet at 1440P.

Re: Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

#64

Post by na85 »

PacketPaul wrote: post #20

Good. The phone is too damn expensive. My middle school son has a $64 BLU phone. It was subsidized by Amazon in return for ads on the lock screen. Non-subsidized price is around $100. Last week we went to a theme park with a lot of waiting for rides. He played plants vs zombies and YouTube videos non-stop while we waited for rides. I occasionally surfed the web on my $1049 iPhone X. By 3 PM my iPhone battery was dead…

When she's old enough, I think paying more for a phone will be worth not exposing my daughter to ads on her lock screen.

Re: Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

#65

Post by dkrich »

appletway wrote: post #51
dkrich wrote: post #21

I think market analysts continue to miss the mark on this story. What I keep hearing over and over are variations of "people are turned off by the $1,000 price tag." I think this is a complete misread. People don't pay $1k for an iPhone because it's the practical thing to do. If practicality is the #1 priority for phone shoppers, they will simply buy a 7 or 8. I don't think this comprises the top of the market, thoug…

(Good) analysts start with numbers, then draw conclusions based on those numbers. Numbers in this case would be reduced orders at Apple suppliers, reduced demand for labor at an iPhone assembly factory, and reduced iPhone Q1 unit forecasts from Apple itself. I'm assuming they also collect their own numbers by surveying end users and consumers to round out both the supply and demand side picture. Then they draw the co…

I don't think Apple actually reduced guidance, I think the article in question predicted that they would reduce guidance.

What we know for sure is that the phone was sold out as soon as it opened for pre-orders and that Apple on their last earnings call reported huge demand for the X. I'm not at all saying that the following is what happened, but it's important to not take any one news report as fact, especially one based on "sources" or "rumors". Stock manipulation and poorly-researched reporting are very real things and again, not saying that's what's going on here, but I would want to see Apple come out and report low demand before forming any lasting conclusion. If that happens, I'll definitely have a different opinion.

In the face of lots of evidence to the contrary, lines like this make me skeptical of the validity:

Apple is said to have trimmed its first-quarter sales forecast to 30 million units from 50 million, Taiwanese newspaper Economic Daily News reported, citing unidentified supply chain officials.

Re: Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

#66

Post by always_good »

PacketPaul wrote: post #23
dfabulich wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JS-heavy sites are night-and-day faster on iOS, thanks primarily to faster CPUs (which is mostly due to better L2/L3 caches). The iPhone X has 8MB of L2 cache; your sub $200 phone likely has no L2 at all. Even high end Android phones have, at most, 1MB of L2 cache. This shows up pretty clearly in Speedometer scores. https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/android-benchmarks

Can you post a few links of websites that are painfully slow on low end machines? I would like to test with my Son’s $64 Android vs my iPhone X.

Try browsing the web on your son's phone at all. You'll find that just about every website is slower to begin with.

Re: Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

#67

Post by na85 »

snuxoll wrote: post #63
olegkikin wrote: post #8

What do people buy $1000 smartphones for? For gaming I can get a pretty good gaming PC for that amount, or Xbox One X with a VR headset. I've never seen anybody do anything really cool with their phone - everyone browses the internet, checks the email, does chats/videochats, maps, take photos, and some silly mobile gaming. I do that all on my sub $200 phone.

Why does anybody buy an $800 graphics card when it will be obsolete in under two years? Because they plan on dealing with it being outpaced by newer hardware but not by enough to care about upgrading for a generation or two in most cases. This is why I’m still rocking my iPhone 7+, I don’t know if I’ll upgrade to the 9 when it comes out at this point because the phone still runs great - just like I plan on skipping V…

And yet I'm still rocking my $350 Oneplus after two years.

Future proofing and spending exorbitant amounts of money do not necessarily have to go hand in hand.

It's ok to admit you spent the apple premium because you like apple phones.

Re: Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

#68

Post by chadgeidel »

dkrich wrote: post #36
aiofgniaotnio wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People buy the X because it's a status symbol and they want to be seen with it. I find this aspect of the tech industry so gross that I'm considering changing careers. Building a new tool that makes people's lives better is great, but much of the time it just becomes a status symbol. No one should feel bad for owning a machine that's a few years old but does everything they need. I'm not convinced that consumer gadg…

I don't disagree with you about what people should do, but the reality is that consumers have been this way for a long time, the only thing that changed is that phones shifted from commodities people bought for performance to fashion accessories. People pay more for cars, bags, clothing, etc. to elevate their feeling of status, now we can add phones to that list. Perhaps this has been Apple's greatest contribution to…

As long as there have been cellular phones, they have been "fashion accessories". We all joke about the business guy with the giant phone, but that was the "iPhone X" of the 80's.

Re: Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

#69

Post by yeukhon »

no-such-address wrote: post #34
PacketPaul wrote: post #20

Good. The phone is too damn expensive. My middle school son has a $64 BLU phone. It was subsidized by Amazon in return for ads on the lock screen. Non-subsidized price is around $100. Last week we went to a theme park with a lot of waiting for rides. He played plants vs zombies and YouTube videos non-stop while we waited for rides. I occasionally surfed the web on my $1049 iPhone X. By 3 PM my iPhone battery was dead…

Why not ask Apple to replace the battery and see if that helps?

I would also look at

1. Battery save mode

2. Lower the brightness

3. Disable most, if not all, background refresh.

Apple does queey a lot of things in the background itself... but I feel you.

Generally these tricks would save you a lot of power and should last an few hours longer for a low-mid usage.

Re: Apple iPhone X Demand Limited, Wall Street Analysts Say

#70

Post by chadgeidel »

ShabbosGoy wrote: post #52
aiofgniaotnio wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People buy the X because it's a status symbol and they want to be seen with it. I find this aspect of the tech industry so gross that I'm considering changing careers. Building a new tool that makes people's lives better is great, but much of the time it just becomes a status symbol. No one should feel bad for owning a machine that's a few years old but does everything they need. I'm not convinced that consumer gadg…

>No one should feel bad for owning a machine that's a few years old but does everything they need. That doesn’t bother me as much as planned obsolescence. Here’s why I had to upgrade to the iPhone X from my iPhone 6.[1] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/20/apple-addresses-why-people...

You had to upgrade to a X when a 8 or a 7 was available - or even a new battery for $80?
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