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Apple May Start Accepting Android Phones As Trade-Ins
HughPickens.com writes Bloomberg reports that according to a person with knowledge of the matter, Apple plans to start accepting non-Apple devices as trade-ins as the company seeks to extend market-share gains against Android smartphones. Apple is seeking to fuel even more iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales after selling 74.5 million units in the last three months of 2014. Thanks to record sales, shipments of iPhones surpassed Android in the US with 47.7 percent of the market compared with Android's 47.6 percent. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook Apple "experienced the highest Android switcher rate in any of the last three launches in the three previous years." While Android phones don't hold their value as well as iPhones, it still makes sense for Apple Stores to accept them, says Israel Ganot, former CEO of Gazelle Inc., an online mobile device trade-in company. "Apple can afford to pay more than the market value to get you to switch over," says Ganot, "on the idea that you're going to fall in love with the iOS ecosystem and stay for a long time."
They have such a markup that they can afford to buy market share. On the other hand I don't know how attractive a change would be though. I think that a lot of people buy one system and stick with it because of the integration. Either you use hangouts, gmail, google calendar etc, or facetime, iCalender, and so on. Changing from one to another would be a pain.
Will not work. Users with android wear watchs have android phones, so the trade-in needs to be inclusive of mobile phone. Too expensive for the users.
Recent versions of Android have suffered from many of the same problems that GNOME 3 suffers from. The UI is changed not because there's a good reason to, but just because it can be changed. These changes don't actually make the software more usable. In fact, the software is much less usable in most cases. And these unnecessary changes prevent beneficial changes from happening. Android's default camera software is still total crap compred to Open Camera, for example. Even when new functionality has been added, it's rarely about benefitting the user, but more about benefiting Google in some way. GNOME 3 wasn't developed with the user's best interest in mind, and I see the same thing happening to Android. Hopefully the Android situation is reversed before it becomes a disaster like GNOME 3 became.
Most people will be attempting to trade in phones with almost no value. The people who buy high end Android phones are Android fans and are going to be unlikely to trade for an iPhone. The vast majority of the Android phones sold are low priced and drop to less then $50 trade in value within two years, the time that they would be traded in. An iPhone that is bought new is typically worth 3-5x that at the two year point. The 2.5 year old iPhone 5 still sells for $200 on eBay in good condition.
Apple is trying everything except the one thing that would actually work - stop price gouging their customers.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I've really been a fan of many things Samsung in the past (TVs, LCDs, even my Blu-ray player is Samsung) and at some point I'm going to replace my Galaxy S3. The S6 is now NOT an option because of things I really care about: user replaceable battery - I use the 4x sized ZeroLemon battery from Amazon), removable SD Card, and the ability to easily root (Not sure what Knox and stuff has done to the newer models).
Is this going to make me trade in my S3 for an Apple phone? No way. Absolutely not. Apple is even worse with all these important features. It doesn't matter how much they give me in "trade in" it's still probably less than I could get just selling the phone myself anyway.
Morphing Software
Too many people sell their old phones for decent money. Others (like my sister) like their two-year-old models with all their data on them and see no real reason to upgrade, so when they're offered an upgrade, they sell the new phone.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"I could never get a Samsung, I'm creative"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I got sick and tired of dealing with iTunes and its many failures and switched to Android. My wife still has an iDevice and regularly gripes when they change the interface, move stuff around for no reason and otherwise make the design "better".
My Android phone has no idea about my home PC because it doesn't have to. I don't see iTunes going anywhere, no way in hell I'm going back to the iOS ecosystem. I'm not likely to get another Samsung phone, which is what I have now -- I'll likely just go for the Nexus so I can skip the bloatware.
...they accept older phones and this works to mitigate Android's OS fragmentation problem.
Saint Jobs himself said no one would ever want a 6" phone.
Its really a big deal for when choosing a mobile OS and also a bigger deal when switching. I have known too many who foolishly made the switch without properly doing their homework and what it really means to switch from one mobile ecosystem to another. Its much worse then going from PC to Mac or the reverse. Many people still keep their files locally on a PC or Mac. But mobile is almost exclusively about cloud storage. Plus you may have invested in apps, content and games that may not easily move to another platform without starting over. Sure, some content now is DRM free and you would think that would help with the move. But many times people still lose pictures, personal videos, files and end up wishing they had stayed with what they had. Apple is no different then a Google or Microsoft in terms of trying to suck you into a ecosystem and keep you there. They make it very easy to accept default storage solutions and marry into their system. However, the divorce may be very ugly if you choose to leave. My advice, is use a third party storage solution and if you like your carrier, maybe even use their solution. But unless you really don't ever see yourself leaving Apple, Google, or Microsoft's ecosystem. I would choose wisely how you store your files and content.
Until bricking ransomware hits the Android market, people who like to program and play with hacks will mostly stick with Android.
People who just want it to work and play well with their other devices in an organized way will likely use iPhone.
Because once someone can drag and drop photos off their device, add a micro-SD card, use standard chargers, and have almost full control over the phone, they'll definitely want to go to Apple.
I just learned yesterday that there are two ways to get photos off an ipad air. One, download dropbox and upload them at about 1Mb/s (that's a lower case b). Two, buy a real tablet.
I bought a Galaxy S2 as soon as it was available, was flying through Singapore and they just arrived in the duty free electronics store. About 1 year ago or more rooted it, and re-partitioned the internal SSD so it could deal with Android's "bloatation" over the years. Then, proceeded to install Cyanogenmod on it. It was like a brand new phone, faster than my wife's new mid tier Samsung Grand. Nice thing about Cyanogenmod, is you really can fine tune it for performance even on the "old" Galaxy S2. Unfortunately, the battery was dying (was my 2nd battery since I've had the phone), and the Samsung store was going to take a week to replace it, so I ordered the battery (15$) from a Samsung store (in Bangkok) and since the Galaxy Alpha was on sale picked it up (I have two SIM's and travel lots anyway, so I figured an extra phone is probably not a bad idea).
Now the Galaxy Alpha is a great phone. 20MP camera, people on this thread saying Android has buggy camera software are full of it. The picture quality is great, considerably better than my son' iPhone 6. It is a bit snappier overall than my Galaxy S2, but to be honest the difference is not that big of a deal.
I would never think of moving to the iPhone "ecosystem", Gmail, contacts, drive, maps are all way to useful to me. Although I grew up with Apple II's and had an early Macintosh 128 then later a 512, the only thing I like from Apple these days is the Macbook Air (but running linux mint for work) and the new Macbook. As soon as the second generation Macbook is out with a bigger screen I'm upgrading and putting linux on it. The Macbooks really are a nice piece of hardware. As to the Apple "Ecosystem" no thank you!!!!
... want to downgrade?
Strangely, in my little world, I'm seeing a surprising uptake in WIndows Phones lately. Never thought I'd see it coming. It seems people who have been happy with Android are wanting a little more, and are horribly confused by the iPhone's single button interface, and see that Windows Phone 8.1 is easier to figure out than the latest/greatest version of Android.
Just my little ecosystem, correlation does not equal causation, but I'm finding it fascinating. Microsoft might still have some life in it. (Helps that Cricket is now giving away a couple different free Windows phones)
Or just get a brand new OnePlus One (buy any Tuesday from oneplus.net without invite) for a fraction of the price.
You can get external USB charging packs in pretty much any form factor imaginable if you need more battery life (which you almost certainly will not with any of the larger smartphones).
The time for replaceable batteries has long past, there is ZERO reason to cling to that dead concept.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why pay for a downgrade?
Mostly, I like WP, because it is the most simple in use. Iphone always was expenisive and I think, that they it will never be the best smartphone!
Note 4 blows the iphone out of the water.