I only see it as a matter of time before brands like Xiaomi make cheaper and better products for sale beyond their current dominance in 'developing countries'. We need to catch up.
iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
171–180 of 551 posts
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I wonder who though Apple's growth would never end. This happens to every company sooner or later.
I was at a NASA workshop in Mountain View. An informational placard outside had two plots of growth, one with an unchecked exponential curve, and one with a curve that comes up to a peak and goes down. It asked which made more sense as a growth curve. My idealized mathematical self thought, naturally, the exponential growth curve, because it expresses what happens when y-dot equals alpha y. But I asked a passing Calt…
> Physical limits on some aspect of the system must intervene and impose a new law.
Just because Apple didn't become the first trillion dollar public company by marketcap (lets assume that chinese bank ipo for a brief second didn't count), doesn't mean that it would have broken a physical limit on the system.
There was a time not long ago when 100 billion companies didn't exist
and there was a time when private venture capital didn't value new businesses at 1 billion dollars
although I don't see the fundamentals to support such large companies, apple, or another company, isn't breaking anything if it does achieve the ability to grow larger
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#173Well besides the obvious about the decline in phone sales I think the primary reasons is Apple's steadfast refusal to get in lower margin markets. Sorry, but a four hundred dollar phone is still not cheap enough especially when you consider the monthly usage fees following the purchase.
Then we see tablets and all Apple has done is release newer models with higher price points and worse more expensive add ons.
Finally, their cheapest desktop is eleven hundred and cheapest laptop is nine hundred for a low powered system, the first realistic laptops start at thirteen hundred. No I don't really count the Mac Mini because it never seems to register on people's radar and by the time you add on the monitor and such its up close to eight and nine hundred.
I won't even touch that Watch, its price or the silliness of that is the price of just the bands.
Apple's failure is that it won't go low. They don't have to go rock bottom but they damn well need to push "LE" models or the like. Redo the first Air with a few minor upgrades as the Air LE, 299... get an iMac out for the public nearer seven hundred. Get the rest of the iMac line back into realistic pricing especially for SSD upgrades. Please update the Mac Pro, really how long are they going to ignore it?
tl;dr Apple simply priced them out of too many markets, either out of ignorance or arrogance.
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#174Incredible that this is the first time in 13 years that Apple hasn't posted quarterly growth. I'm sure there will be lots of "Apple has lost its ability to innovate" articles based on this, but growing for the last ~52 straight quarters is insane. And I don't think one quarter without growth is enough evidence to conclude "Apple may be reaching the saturation point among potential customers in some countries" or "oth…
There is something fundamentally wrong with our system that "growth" is used as the main metric for assessing business success. It's growth for the sake of growth (and more $), and not deploying business to solve hard customer problems and to make the world a little bit better.
That's a big reason why private businesses are better than public ones. There's no need to push for unsustainable growth at the behest of busybody investors.
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think iPhone performance has hit a point where one doesn't really feel the need to upgrade right away I have a cheap 2014 Motorola Moto G and I have the same "problem". Yes, there are hundreds of modern phones out there which are several times faster and have way better hardware but the Moto G is fast enough for me. I usually just browse the web, type a few messages in Whatsapp, take a few pictures, ... and the p…
Agreed, this is the exact reason I went with a Moto G. It was under $200 and I tend to be very clumsy. It runs the latest nearly stock Andriod and is a very smooth experience. The only fault I can find is it's camera. So for someone who finds that very important this may not be an option.
I'm in the same boat and bought a Moto G, but one major issue is the lack of gyroscope for google cardboard/vr use.
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#176Well, they had a good run. I wonder what's next. I don't think anyone was surprised though, around 2014 we saw the writing on the wall. I mean take the Nexus 5, I have plenty of friends who have one and it's basically like they bought a microwave. It just works, it's fine, and they're expressing 0, and I really mean 0 interest in upgrading their microwave. They'll keep it for as long as the battery lasts and they don…
Smartphone VR with positional tracking will come this year I reckon (on Android)
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#177I run a repair shop. We've repaired over 3,000 Apple devices for customers. We are always chatting with our customers, so we get a ton of feedback from them about what they're doing with their phones. We hear a few things consistently: 1) Providers have switched from "free upgrades every 2 years" to a plan cost and a monthly phone cost, so people now really know how much their phone costs--and many would rather save…
I think the reason most 6S's are rose gold is that it's the new latest color - i.e. you want the latest, and also to message that to everyone else? Get a rose-gold phone. Also, considering probably the vast majority of servicing of iPhones happens at an Apple genius bar, I'd say your (very informative) views of the population have some selection bias.
Pink (aka "rose gold") appeals to many women. It also differentiates from the sea of space grey devices.
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was at a NASA workshop in Mountain View. An informational placard outside had two plots of growth, one with an unchecked exponential curve, and one with a curve that comes up to a peak and goes down. It asked which made more sense as a growth curve. My idealized mathematical self thought, naturally, the exponential growth curve, because it expresses what happens when y-dot equals alpha y. But I asked a passing Calt…
A chart of growth rate might have a peak, but a chart of the thing that is growing is more simply modeled as a sigmoid that has an initial exponential growth portion, then a logarithmic portion which ends in a plateau.
That depends.
Time-delayed negative feedback produces a peak and a crash.
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#179So now we found out how long Apple was able to ride Steve Job's coat tails.
Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://i.imgur.com/Lng3MQB.jpg I'd say that computers have come down in price.
I think the point they are making is that the 'high-end' / cutting-edge is the same price as it has been. You couldn't get $2,300 for a 33MHz machine now, just like you can't sell a Galaxy S1 for a $700.
That's a "Jade" PC.
High-end PCs at that time were Compaq computers. Not cheap knockoffs that were made by no-name brands. The Compaq 386 had a launch price of $6500 to $10,000+
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/10/business/the-executive-com...
The "Jade" PC you see in that image is probably more comparable to "Gateway" brand now-a-days.
Computers are a hell-of-a-lot cheaper today than in the past.
EDIT: I looked it up, and I can't believe I forgot about this. Back then, every mom-and-pop store was able to build their own brand of PCs. The clone wars were unstoppable I tell you! Jade Computers was apparently a small business with just a few retail locations running out of California.