View Single Post
El Gallo
Formerly “MumboJumbo”
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
 
2019-08-11, 14:07

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Bobsky View Post
Meh. I have a three year old phone and absolutely no need at all for a replacement. It functions. It's battery life is fine. I don't see myself buying a new one until I absolutely have to replace it (if it lasts me a decade, I'd be happy with the money I spent). To accommodate this, I have spent a fair amount of money on protecting it in higher and higher quality phone cases (I'm done now, the real leather case I have now will likely outlast the phone). I don't think we're in the era when phones are increasing in quality and apps are increasing in hardware needs that replacement every few years is normal or desirable.

Apple, Samsung, and Google are in this unenviable position where they have to keep topping off their phones because no one wants to buy year old hardware, but there is a much smaller new phone market than a decade ago. Any update is going to be disappointing and is unlikely to drive more purchases or a renewal of that fresh/exciting early smartphone era.

Phones, like computers are 'returning' to white goods status rather than status symbols...
There is some strong truth to this but Samsung has still managed to increase marketshare along with Huawei. Every person I know (half a dozen people) who has new Android phone in the last year has the One Plus 6T and for the money it looks like a fantastic phone. It makes my iPhone 7 look dated and the size and features for the price are just astonishing. If Apple released their version of that hardware at $650-700 it would be a worthy upgrade.

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
One of the reasons I opted for the XS over the XR is that the XR is bigger (taller/wider) than the XS, which I did not like at all. I also didn't like the lack of force touch, because yes I use it. The XR also feels cheap like the iPhone 5c (the iPhone everyone forgot about) that I had in the past.

It's not like Apple screwed up, it's just that the smartphone market is over saturated and it's slowing down, all manufacturers have seen huge dips in sales.
No Apple has very much screwed up. They kept driving the price of their version of innovation up while putting very dated tech in the "value" proposition but the reality is their version of value used to be their own price for their own flagship iPhones. The market itself is forcing prices down which means the "value" iPhones become terrible price propositions while the "flagship" iPhones become tolerable from a tech perspective but horrible from a price perspective.

Samsung did not keep or grow marketshare with their flagship phones. They are doing so with their A-series phones which if you look at them, are almost exactly in the same sweet spot as the One Plus phones. The A50 in particular is what Apple should be offering and selling for $500 even though Samsung is getting $350 for it.

These are phones with a front notch. They have in-screen fingerprint readers, AMOLED screens and multiple rear cameras with varying levels of premium features for $350-600. Apple has an LCD screen, single camera phone with Face ID/notch starting at $750.

Understand what I am saying, I'm not saying Apple isn't grabbing the premium smartphone dollars over the Galaxy S series or Note as an example. Samsung isn't selling nearly as many of those phones either because the prices are simply too high.

However whatever the number of dollars of profit to be had there, Samsung and others are still keeping life in their eco-systems and product moving at lower pricepoints while Apple has some rapidly shrinking marketshare.

Apple seriously needs to find a way to make a flagship phone in the $800 range again. (This isn't new this is what they used to do.) Then they need to offer entry into the Apple ecosystem and keep people growing up in it and buying and using all their services for $450-550.

It isn't just that our older iPhones (I own the iPhone 7) aren't slow and can still do the job because that was always the case before. In my household we currently own the iPhone 6 (replaced by kiddo with One Plus 6T), 6S, 7 and 8+. The adults would get our new phones and hand them down to the kids.

We haven't done that because the same number of dollars doesn't get any sort of real improvement. I don't need another single camera LCD screen phone. I already have that. I don't need to spend $150 to improve the storage with the only option available because the middle tier was intentionally removed while upping the base level price $250. That makes it a $400 increase which alters the buying decision. My youngest gave up waiting and bought himself a new phone.

To get my money Apple must offer at least the iPhone X type phone for $750 in their releases this fall. That means two generation old tech for value price. Last year they created the iPhone Xr and removed the X so they wouldn't have to lower the price for that level of tech. An AMOLED screen, face ID and multiple back cameras are at least two generations old for APPLE when this fall rolls around and if they refuse to offer that tech at a two year old price, I won't give them my money.

It isn't lack of innovation. Apple is keeping their innovation at a certain price tier and refusing to even offer the older phones with that tech at the lower prices. They can't hide from the market or themselves any longer. People are moving on.
  quote