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Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

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Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#121

Post by bane »

panacea wrote: post #109
bane wrote: post #84

So I had a few separate experiences with this over the weekend: 1) A friend stood in line for a few hours, got to the front, found out they didn't have the color he wanted and left. 2) A colleague in another company got one and she immediately remarked, "it looks just like Android!". 3) A neighbor returned theirs because they couldn't read all the low contrast stuff on the tiny screen. 4) Another neighbor has kept th…

1) A friend stood in line for a few hours, got to the front, found out they didn't have the color he wanted and left. – At the Apple store I was at, Apple staff greeted people entering the queue, asked them what they intended to purchase and gave them a card (reservation) 2) A colleague in another company got one and she immediately remarked, "it looks just like Android!". – You overheard a conversation in another co…

> – At the Apple store I was at, Apple staff greeted people entering the queue, asked them what they intended to purchase and gave them a card (reservation)

Didn't do that at either of the two Apple stores I'm aware of (there are 5 in my area), or the three AT&T stores my friends went to.

> – You overheard a conversation in another company? Good ears. Extra credit for "she".

Grownup companies sometimes do things together, not every other company is your competitor.

> – "Hey neighbour! I couldn't help noticing you aren't mowing your lawn with a phone?!" "The screen was too tiny neighbourino!"

My neighborhood has a very active community message board and I know many of the member personally from neighborhood events.

> – "IT'S TOO LOUD, HOW DO YOU SHUT IT OFF?? I'M BLIND!!!"

Here are the exact quotes

Neighbor 1: "I'm not a fan. Hate what they did to ical. The new icons look like they are for small children (that i can get over). And the bright white is obnoxious. What the hell did they do to safari?? I'm sad ... But im sure i will eventually get used to it. "

Neighbor 2: "I'm not "upgrading" yet. Hate the font."

Neighbor 1: "Everything is bright white and hard for me read...feeling old."

Neighbor 3: "So far I actually like it. The calendar took me a minute to get used to as well. At first I didn't like it until I realized you get a 5 day shot when you turn it on its side. I can't figure out how to do a list view yet - is there one?"

Neighbor 1: "I have light sensitivity issues (Astigmatism in both eyes - and I also have cataracts - God I sound old!) so the bright white is just harsh for me and not having huge contrasting colors is also hard on my eyes. Yep I agree the one swipe to have controls is nice and I do like what they did with the photos."

Neighbor 4: "Steve Jobs is probably rolling over in his grave right now..."

Neighbor 5: "I downloaded on my iPhone the other night, not a fan. But I downloaded on my iPad earlier today, and I don't mind it at all. But it is way too bright."

Neighbor 1: "Thank you for saying its too bright ... I was beginning to wonder if it was me."

> – 'Hey Wifey, wanna line up in this 2 hour queue? Dum, de dum [two hours in the queue pass]. Oh hey, we're at the front of the queue! Nah this sucks. Wanna go buy some Samsung Galaxies? YES!'

Talked to him in person (he's next door). And that was pretty much the conversation.

> – Your astro-turfing obviously disinterests you, as does your job and it shows dude :[ Quit your job.

What does my job have to do with this?

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#122

Post by venomsnake »

coldcode wrote: post #22

Clearly they are going out of business. Not to mention only 200 Million devices running iOS7 so far.

In the long run we are all dead. And all companies go bankrupt.

Aggregated numbers do not tell the whole story.

If smartphones mature to good enough and people shift to slower upgrade cycles (think 2006-7 in PC terms) then apple will have trouble growing. And in our quarterly reports world growth is what counts. Which is already hard when you have the revenue of a couple of countries. And there are not many people that can afford to pay the apple premiums and are not already paying them.

For me the interesting stuff is what is the breakdown of the sales. If the majority of these 9 millions are iPhone 4/S users that switch it can mean one thing, if 6 of those 9 million units are new customers is another story.

We work in industry where the rise and falls of titans is rapid. I will be equally unsurprised if in 5 years Apple still have amazing performance or they are on the brink of bankruptcy.

Apple have some structural problems that they need to address to stay on top - the lack of Steve Jobs (mostly as a perception thing for the products), the store, how to reach to new users that are poorer and protect the margins and the perception of premium-ness of their brand, deal with the growing share of Android etc. None of them are unsolvable but combined they are a challenge.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#123

Post by ctdonath »

mikeash wrote: post #70
ctdonath wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't be surprised if the bulk of the gold phones are shipped to Oriental countries, where the color is far more popular and sought after with much greater earnest (bordering on social imperative).

Purely anecdotally, a ton of the people in my line wanted gold, but only the first ten people actually got one. It seems plenty popular here too. It will be interesting if we ever get a color breakdown to see if this "gold is for Asian countries" thing actually holds up, or if it's just another instance of bizarre cultural misunderstanding.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6430779 seems they did send most of the gold phones to Asia, and all sold out first day.

Still may be a bizarre cultural misunderstanding, as sounds like it's crazy popular everywhere else too.

Expect every smartphone maker make & push gold phones hard after today.

ETA: Note "seems". That's my impression from the link, no hard data seen yet.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#124

Post by jiggy2011 »

coldtea wrote: post #113
thechut wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 5S is my first cell phone. I love being able to make calls from outside of my house and quickly and easily write "text" messages to my friends. I use to have to wait until I was at work or at home to make a phone call, but now I can do it from anywhere! I also love these app things, there is one for everything. I also can't believe I can just connect to the internet from anywhere, and there are not even any tubes…

You intend this to be ironic, but a proper perspective would be that: 1) 10 years ago this was way bulkier, far less convenient and more often than not without an intertube connection, 2) 20 years ago this was absolute bare-bones and only for upper middle class and rich people, 3) 30 years ago it was science fiction. Now, a 20-something would of course take all this for granted. But technology will have some surprise…

Not sure about bulkier 10 years ago, the nokia 8310 was all the rage back then and they were so tiny that people used to lose them down cracks in sofas. Not to mention better battery.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#125

Post by [deleted] »

bane wrote: post #84

So I had a few separate experiences with this over the weekend: 1) A friend stood in line for a few hours, got to the front, found out they didn't have the color he wanted and left. 2) A colleague in another company got one and she immediately remarked, "it looks just like Android!". 3) A neighbor returned theirs because they couldn't read all the low contrast stuff on the tiny screen. 4) Another neighbor has kept th…

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#126

Post by joakleaf »

mikeash wrote: post #104
joakleaf wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry, but I think you are assuming a little bit too much here. You are guestimating that 4000 gold phones were sold in the stores based on a 10 per store rumored number you've heard and 400 stores. Then you guess that retail is only 10% (another guess) and so multiply you original guestimate by 10 to get 40000 gold phones. It's quite hopeless guesswork. We don't know the distribution of models in retail or onli…

How are you assuming any less than me? Of course mine is a complete guess. I make no claims otherwise. But so is yours. So kindly cut the attitude.

Sorry. No atitude!

Just pointing out that it is impossible to guess, and that your last number constitutes less than 1% of the total estimated iPhone 5Ss sold.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#127

Post by mikeash »

coldtea wrote: post #113
thechut wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 5S is my first cell phone. I love being able to make calls from outside of my house and quickly and easily write "text" messages to my friends. I use to have to wait until I was at work or at home to make a phone call, but now I can do it from anywhere! I also love these app things, there is one for everything. I also can't believe I can just connect to the internet from anywhere, and there are not even any tubes…

You intend this to be ironic, but a proper perspective would be that: 1) 10 years ago this was way bulkier, far less convenient and more often than not without an intertube connection, 2) 20 years ago this was absolute bare-bones and only for upper middle class and rich people, 3) 30 years ago it was science fiction. Now, a 20-something would of course take all this for granted. But technology will have some surprise…

A minor nitpick on (3), commercial mobile phone service dates to 1946, and the first service that we'd identify as being something like a modern "cell phone", with actual cells, automated handoff, integration into the POTS network, etc., came in 1978.

Technology always seems to progress both faster and slower than you think.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#128

Post by pinaceae »

pinaceae wrote: post #99

most frustratingly this is another datapoint that won't matter much in the current slew of punditry aimed at talking Apple down. just go back to the HN post of the 5s launch event and it's full of doomsayers. seems like apple is going against the very fabric that unites neckbeards around the world - and is crazy successful. just like carmakers that stopped catering to the tinkerers. here's to the crazy ones. next wee…

and to illustrate my point, HN post, a mere 12 days ago:

Apple's Windows 95 problem. http://blog.raavel.com/2013/09/11/apple-problem/

"Apple recently unveiled its new iPhone 5s and 5c models, to a collective “meh”. The stock sold off and is poised to continue moving lower. The market is telling Apple that it is not innovative enough and that its need to do much more, and within that lies the crux of Apple’s problem."

But yeah, a lot of comments, falling over each other in their collective agreement. will that same random blog now turn 180 and consider it's failure?

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#129

Post by mikeash »

joakleaf wrote: post #126
mikeash wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you assuming any less than me? Of course mine is a complete guess. I make no claims otherwise. But so is yours. So kindly cut the attitude.

Sorry. No atitude! Just pointing out that it is impossible to guess, and that your last number constitutes less than 1% of the total estimated iPhone 5Ss sold.

OK, I probably misread the tone in your first sentence.

It's easy to guess! Nearly impossible to guess accurately, though, I agree.

You're right about it being less than 1% of the total, although I disagree that this makes the estimate absurd. I think it's entirely possible that the gold 5S constitutes less than 1% of production or sales so far. I certainly could be wrong.

Re: Apple’s iPhone 5s And iPhone 5c Sell 9M Units Over Opening Weekend

#130

Post by lh7777 »

partyanimal wrote: post #79
arrrg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m honestly not too sure about that. Knowing the split between the two would be very interesting. I would imagine that they can make tons of 5c phones while the 5s may be more problematic. So the balance between the two may be more even than it seems. (Also, I would be really interested whether the 5c or 5s is the more high margin device. I could imagine that at least for now the 5c has a higher margin than the 5s –…

Apple's pricier iPhone 5s reportedly outsells more affordable iPhone 5c by wide margin http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/23/iphone-5s-3-times-...

"This makes sense since those who feel the need to buy a new device the very weekend it launches are most likely the power users who want the highest-end phone experience."
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