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Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

bbc.com

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Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#161

Post by FireBeyond »

close04 wrote: post #88
Maakuth wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect Apple to give up their margin? The DRAM price hikes affect every smartphone vendor, even Samsung through opportunity cost. That means the competition will also need to hike their prices. And the competition has lower margin, so they have less choice here.

There's a limit to what even a wealthy customer can stomach. They need to consider what costs them more, Apple eating $50-$100 of the cost, or people holding on to an iPhone one year longer than usual. These announcements have another effect of boosting sales now . Summer is usually a sales slump so selling more now is probably good for Apple.

The schedule is predictable now but in case you forget, you can always tell when the new iPhone is right around the corner because AT&T starts spamming your email and SMS with 'reminders' that you can get an iPhone 17 right now! Or for Father's Day! Or because you're eligible for an upgrade! Or...!

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#162

Post by jauntywundrkind »

cm2187 wrote: post #22

There was a very interesting podcast that went into all the details of the AI supply chain shortage [1] The key takeaway for smartphones isn't so much that iphones will cost $150-200 more, which apple customers have shown they can stomach. But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDG_Hx3BSUE

We'll see what happens but I wouldn't be shocked or offended if China obliges the state-sponsored memory makers to support other local industry, beyond AI. The consumer electronics world shutting down would be immensely bad, for China, and for many: someone steering us all away from this path seems highly advisable for everyone.

Toms Hardware just put out an article talking about this, although they focused more on ssd and memory stick makers. The principle ought apply quite broadly though. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/chinese-make...

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#163

Post by brailsafe »

teiferer wrote: post #42
brailsafe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market. Hmm. Even if iPhone users can theoretically stomach the increase, they have many other options available, whereas if the cheap $200 phones are the bottom of the market, there's no other real options. I'm in the ~$450 USD Pixel range atm, and never buy the current flagship or anything. If…

> Plenty of younger people are already reverting to more primitive phones That's an effect that has always been claimed (younger generations rejecting new tech and going offline/low-tech/anti-...) but it's never been more than a minor very temporary fad. In the mid to long term, younger people are always at the forefront of tech adoption and it would be very surprising if it was different this time.

Frankly I don't think I've ever heard of this being claimed for prior generations at a scale that any other generation would notice. There was always that kid who kept their CD collection or their dumbphone longer than most, but it was more of a niche thing to do. That said, I don't wholly disagree that it's a fad, time will tell.

Considering there hasn't really been (to my knowledge) other instances where involvement of media and technology has been remotely as intense as now from day one in a kid's life, it doesn't seem like any prior time period would be as likely to produce a sense of repulsion as now. Sure, I didn't carry my Gen X relative's obsession with television into my adult life, but something like that I'd consider to be a bit of a tenuous comparison to make to the breadth of insidious mind-altering media delivery conduits we're constantly exposed to now.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#164

Post by brailsafe »

teiferer wrote: post #131
cm2187 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell the difference between a 5 years old smartphone model and the latest generation.

I'm with you on that, but that's not the point. It's about what role tech plays in life. The claim that young people are increasingly detoxing and embracing offline life is just not true. More than any earlier generation, being online to stay in touch with friends and the general happenings of the world is integral to most young folks life. The same thing will happen with AI chats. My grandma rarely uses google in he…

> I'm with you on that, but that's not the point.

The point was that if there was a time when people who'd otherwise be buying the latest smartphones for relatively mundane purposes—spending arbitrary amounts of money for them—would balk at the idea, that time could be now. Nothing to do with chatbots.

Money is tight, jobs are scarce; for many people on their way into college or even in the middle of what would be their career, there isn't a clear answer to the question of whether the current tech landscape is anything but a threat to one's future or their mental health.

Seems like kind of an anecdote vs anecdote situation where I see people cutting back severely on their exposure and being more frugal or retro, and you don't, which is fine, but I'm not doing anything more than speculating at hypothetical future behavior based on real world conditions and what I've seen.

There's simply not much required from a hardware standpoint to facilitate multi-modal communication patterns if someone's practicing a limited-exposure relationship with tech.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#165

Post by frollogaston »

FireBeyond wrote: post #161
close04 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a limit to what even a wealthy customer can stomach. They need to consider what costs them more, Apple eating $50-$100 of the cost, or people holding on to an iPhone one year longer than usual. These announcements have another effect of boosting sales now . Summer is usually a sales slump so selling more now is probably good for Apple.

The schedule is predictable now but in case you forget, you can always tell when the new iPhone is right around the corner because AT&T starts spamming your email and SMS with 'reminders' that you can get an iPhone 17 right now! Or for Father's Day! Or because you're eligible for an upgrade! Or...!

Only $1/mo for an iPhone 17 Pro Max! (With eligible trade-in of iPhone 16 Pro Max, on postpaid plan only)

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#166

Post by brailsafe »

frollogaston wrote: post #149
mrweasel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the average consumer, I'd argue that any phone made in the past 10+ years would be absolutely fine. It issues are: battery life/battery replacement, lack of updates, developers targeting newer devices only. In Apples case a good solution would be to rollback at least part of the liquid glass UI updates, as it severely affects older devices. Then announce upfront that every Apple phone will be supported for no les…

I do use an iPhone 6S. The hardware is fine, but I basically can't install apps because they all target newer OSes that can't be installed on it, and the older versions of those apps available are broken.

I think that's the unfortunate cycle of iOS and iPadOS. Their hardware more or less served its purpose eons ago and there's little reason why it couldn't still, aside from OS compatibility. Even as a mac user, I've only ever purchased on iOS product, and that was the iPad 3. No subsequent iPad seems to have introduced anything more compelling than what the iPad 3 was capable of (which wasn't much), so as the software compatibility story has degraded over time, it still sits here serving as an occasional epub reader. It would feel bizarre to spend thousands on a new one to effectively be able to do what I did with it in ~2012.

My android phones eventually run their course due to excessive physical damage, theft, etc.. but since I've never paid much for them, it's usually not so disruptive to just pay a few hundred and get something used or basic to replace it, or order a new screen and repair it.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#167

Post by brailsafe »

high_na_euv wrote: post #53
brailsafe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market. Hmm. Even if iPhone users can theoretically stomach the increase, they have many other options available, whereas if the cheap $200 phones are the bottom of the market, there's no other real options. I'm in the ~$450 USD Pixel range atm, and never buy the current flagship or anything. If…

>Plenty of younger people are already reverting to more primitive phones or physical media Id love to know how many of em

I'd be curious as well.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#168

Post by brailsafe »

SllX wrote: post #58
high_na_euv wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Plenty of younger people are already reverting to more primitive phones or physical media Id love to know how many of em

Not enough to have stopped the iPhone 17 Pro line from being a runaway success that even Apple—famously excellent at projecting demand and already invested in selling as many as possible given its the flagship model line of their flagship product line—completely underestimated the demand at launch. I’d love to know how much “plenty” in the parent’s perspective stacks up against just this one individual model line and…

Surprising amount of hostility to what was a speculative anecdotal observation. I'd be surprised if many people under the age of 17 would be buying a $2000+ phone anyway, but given tough economic situations, decreasing opportunity, and decreasing stability, the likelihood seems low that significantly increased prices for effectively the same (boring) product would be absorbed by anyone other than the richest or older established crowd. Whether it holds true at global level, or in your social circle, I don't know.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#169

Post by johnvanommen »

dehrmann wrote: post #151
johnvanommen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of industries got bitten by greed and the sudden deflation of demand and huge unsold inventory post COVID. I’m betting that the world is about to hit a wall of inflation. https://i.ibb.co/s9Mm8w2r/IMG-0743.jpg This is a graph I made. It shows: * the inflation rate from 1971 until 1991 * the inflation rate from the start of COVID 19 until today. Does anyone notice anything interesting about the graph?

> Does anyone notice anything interesting about the graph? Cherrypicked dates? But I'd like to hear analysis comparing the Nixon shock to the covid shock since one was monetary and one was supply and demand.

> Cherrypicked dates? But I'd like to hear analysis comparing the Nixon shock to the covid shock since one was monetary and one was supply and demand.

Of course!

* In 1971 and 2019, the M2 money supply was flooded. In 1971 by the Nixon Shock, in 2019 by Covid: The amount of US dollars that existed between 1961 and 1971 increased by 100%, the amount of US dollars that existed between 1971 and 1981 increased by 253%. Assets are denominated in dollars and the flood of money that the Nixon Shock caused led to the inflation of the late 70s and 80s. The flood of money that Covid caused led to the inflation of the last six years, 2022 in particular.

* The other factor that contributed was the lack of oil supply. In the 1970s, it was caused by a war in the Middle east. Will we see history repeat again? My bet is yes.

Data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

Note that the Fed data is difficult to read in the 70s, you'll want to play around with the length of the time window. It's difficult to read because the supply of money has grown so much.

Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs

#170

Post by FireBeyond »

frollogaston wrote: post #165
FireBeyond wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The schedule is predictable now but in case you forget, you can always tell when the new iPhone is right around the corner because AT&T starts spamming your email and SMS with 'reminders' that you can get an iPhone 17 right now! Or for Father's Day! Or because you're eligible for an upgrade! Or...!

Only $1/mo for an iPhone 17 Pro Max! (With eligible trade-in of iPhone 16 Pro Max, on postpaid plan only)

Gotta get rid of as much of that stock as possible, but keep collecting 16s to harvest for repair (not that I object to improving repairability ,per se)!
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