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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

#161

Post by valuearb »

namelost wrote: post #78
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…

I agree. The problem with the X is that every new feature comes with a downside. It has a edge-to-edge screen but the notch is really ugly in landscape mode. It has Face ID but no Touch ID. It has wireless charging at the cost of a fragile glass back. It is a phone beset by compromises, the only thing it does reliably is broadcast that you are rich enough to buy a $1000 phone.

All electronic devices are exercises in compromise.

But the X is very reliable at everything except broadcasting that I own an X. You see, like most every other X, mine is in a case. So far no one has ever noticed it's an X. And that case means I don't care about the glass back.

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

#162

Post by valuearb »

pier25 wrote: post #83
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

You are not wrong, but that's like arguing that a Porsche is the only way to drive.

Well, it is.

If you can afford one.

And if you can, can you give me a ride?

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

#163

Post by ohiovr »

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…

Apple will eventually ruin the performance of the 7+ like they did with the ipad 2 and the iphone 6. I would advise you to wait a few months for reports to come in regarding what implications to your ux the next ios update has.

Keep in mind this is intentional destruction of your property.

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

#164

Post by valuearb »

olegkikin wrote: post #94
tlholaday wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do people buy $1000 smartphones for? Consider the iPhone X a smartcamera instead of a smartphone. Consider the "portraits in low light" at the end of the side-by-side comparison section that Vanessa Hand Orellana and Lexy Savvides did for CNET here: https://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-x-vs-iphone-8-plus-is-the-c...

If I want a low-light camera, I will buy a DSLR/mirrorless, and no smartphone comes even close to something like Sony A7s (~$1100 used). I used to do commercial portrait photography, so I know. I also dislike the fake background blur / bokeh trend. I understand why the companies are doing it, but it's insanely hard to implement it right, and no phone has achieved it. Every time there's hair involved, they all fail.

My DSLR is terrible at browsing the web and getting my emails. Don't get me started on trying to play angry birds on it.

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

#165

Post by joelhooks »

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…

I got the X because I like the screen to size ratio and my purchased media is resting on Apple’s markets.

A few hundred bucks either way is inconsequential.

Style-wise, they aren’t visibly much different than the last several generations of iPhones or Androids.

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

#166

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

scarface74 wrote: post #137
EpicEng wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no such thing as an overpriced item in a free market as long as the quantity that Apple can make in a given time period matches the quantity people are willing to buy. That's the market perspective, but there's a value perspective as well. For example, my kid loves blind bags (no more youtube I think...) These companies want to sell him $0.05 plastic dolls for $5 and they prey on his gambling response to do…

In the aggregate, "the value perspective", is how many people value the product enough to pay Apple's asking price. If the value perspective isn't enough to sell the number of phones Apple can make, then Apple would lower the price.

Or increase ad spend and arrange for PR-managed celebtrity sponsorships as “social proof.” Or repackage most of the tech in a new version with some allegedly extra premium feature, like a useable battery life. Or release some other products and rely on a halo effect.

The point being that perceptions of practical utility, Veblen value, and other price-defining factors are all malleable and brand-dependent, and essentially about social psychology, not some mythical “objective” market value.

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

#167

Post by valuearb »

ohiovr wrote: post #163
snuxoll wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apple will eventually ruin the performance of the 7+ like they did with the ipad 2 and the iphone 6. I would advise you to wait a few months for reports to come in regarding what implications to your ux the next ios update has. Keep in mind this is intentional destruction of your property.

Yea, there is no evidence they have ever done anything like that. Throttling CPUs so an old phone won't reboot during use is actually improving performance, and you can get rid of throttling with a new battery. Apple should be criticized for poorly communicating the choice users had to make, not for the throttling itself.

And an iPhone 6 only has 1 Gb of RAM, and it's multicore performance is less than half of an iPhone 7, and one quarter of an iPhone X. And an iPad 2 only has 512 Mb of ram, and it's multicore performance is one quarter that of an iPhone 6, and around 1/18th of an iPad Pro.

It's basically impossible to add useful new OS features without impacting a three year old devices performance, so the only choice is whether to withhold those features from older phones or accept the tradeoffs. And you control whether you accept those features by accepting the upgrade.

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

#168

Post by ohiovr »

valuearb wrote: post #167
ohiovr wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple will eventually ruin the performance of the 7+ like they did with the ipad 2 and the iphone 6. I would advise you to wait a few months for reports to come in regarding what implications to your ux the next ios update has. Keep in mind this is intentional destruction of your property.

Yea, there is no evidence they have ever done anything like that. Throttling CPUs so an old phone won't reboot during use is actually improving performance, and you can get rid of throttling with a new battery. Apple should be criticized for poorly communicating the choice users had to make, not for the throttling itself. And an iPhone 6 only has 1 Gb of RAM, and it's multicore performance is less than half of an iPh…

I don't care about new bells and whistles. How about this, your update makes my ux poor, let me go back to the previous version when that os was selling that phone.

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

#169

Post by olegkikin »

snuxoll wrote: post #146
olegkikin wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An $800 graphics card has an immediate use case: high FPS for games at high resolutions and high settings. Which is very important in competitive gaming, for instance. I don't see such a use case for a $1000 smartphone. What important task does it solve that a $300-400 phone doesn't? A slightly better camera, slightly smoother scrolling, slightly faster web page rendering. None of that impresses me in the slightest,…

Camera is hugely important to me, as is web browsing performance - the two tasks I use my phone most heavily for. In fact, these are the only two reasons I jumped from my iPhone 6+ to the 7+. You can find a decent phone for $400 these days, but there's always tradeoffs and I'm not willing to compromise (and to be honest, I have an investment in the Apple ecosystem, so unless I plan on figuring out an entirely new wor…

That's what I don't get.

Which websites are radically slower on iphone 6+ compared to 7+?

And the camera - what use case are you talking about? Taking family photos to post on Facebook? If so, how is that "hugely important"? Taking professional photos?

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

#170

Post by user5994461 »

Joeri wrote: post #87

The iphone X is very overpriced when viewed as a utility object, because it doesn’t provide 4x the utility of a $250 phone. But it is very reasonable when viewed as a fashion accessory. A $1000 phone to go inside a $2000 purse is not crazy at all. People keep looking at apple as a tech company and struggling to understand them, but if you view them as a luxury/fashion company who happens to specialize in technology t…

>>> it doesn’t provide 4x the utility of a $250 phone

That is not correct. Try taking a photo of a text document with a $250 phone, the text is not readable because the camera and the software is terrible. A better phone would allow you to not have a dedicated scanner.

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