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Did Apple Retail Prices Get Too High in 2018? Consumers Say Yes. (usatoday.com)
Apple has for years been a premium brand that rarely, if ever discounted products. Every year, the company could raise prices on products, and consumers would not only happily pay, but stand in long lines for the privilege of doing so. From a report: So when Apple started putting misleading, but seemingly consumer-friendly posters in front of Apple Stores at the end of 2018 offering a new iPhone model for $300 off (with trade-in of your current phone), you know something different happened for the company this year. Consumers fought back. Many analysts have reported that in the wake of poorer-than-expected sales for this year's crop of iPhones, Apple cut back on production, including on the $1,100 iPhone XS Max, the $999 iPhone XS and the XR, the "budget" model that replaced the previous entry-level new phone, the $349 SE. The price for the XR (the one Apple is hawking discounts for): $749.
"This should be a wakeup call for Apple," says Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. "They swung, and they really missed." The prices on the new phones are "far too high," says Terry Walton, a tourist from Auckland, New Zealand. He has an iPhone 7 and didn't even consider any of the X-series iPhones because it still works just fine. Upgrading "didn't enter my mind at all," he says. It wasn't just iPhones that got price hikes. Apple also upped the cost of the top-of-the-line iPad to $1,000 as well (or over $2,800 for a loaded model) and added $300 to the cost of the Mac Mini and new MacBook Air computers.
"This should be a wakeup call for Apple," says Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. "They swung, and they really missed." The prices on the new phones are "far too high," says Terry Walton, a tourist from Auckland, New Zealand. He has an iPhone 7 and didn't even consider any of the X-series iPhones because it still works just fine. Upgrading "didn't enter my mind at all," he says. It wasn't just iPhones that got price hikes. Apple also upped the cost of the top-of-the-line iPad to $1,000 as well (or over $2,800 for a loaded model) and added $300 to the cost of the Mac Mini and new MacBook Air computers.
At the prices they charge, I would expect a superior product and build quality.
You can take your $2800 loaded iPad and bend it easily with your hands, among other flaws. I wouldn't even expect that from a $100 tablet.
Glad people are starting to wake up to Apple's price gouging and downward slide in quality.
The problems are becoming aggravating enough that I'm reviewing my options for the next upgrade.
My music library doesn't completely load. I have playlists that show all the songs but when you click to play, it grays out as unavailable. If I plug the phone or tablet in and sync, it'll sync up a couple of thousand different songs but other songs will then gray out. This is with about 50G of "free space" per iTunes.
The spacebar issue. For some reason, in more recent versions of IOS, I keep missing the spacebar and have posts with concatenated words. I don't know why it's doing it all of a sudden but it's damned annoying.
The music thing pisses me off the most though. Go through the trouble to create a playlist, go to listen to music during my commute and half the songs are missing.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
There is a big selection of Android phones from the Low End cheap sub $100 phones to the high end phones that are a fraction of a dollar less then what Apple sells, which are arguably just as nice or for some people much better.
However people are still paying more of the Apple phones. So why would lower its prices until it really has too.
Apple rarely gets suckered to the race to the bottom game, even it costs them market share. ...
Here is how the race to the bottom game works.
Company A offers a product at a high price.
Company B offers a similar product at a lower Price (often with some minor quality issues that is barely noticed).
Company A offers a product at a lower cost then B, however to meet the cost they have to cut its quality down.
Company B then goes makes an even crappier product to compete against A.
What we end up with is 2 products that no one really wants to buy because they are so poor.
We have seen this with Gateway 2000. Back in the mid 1990's gateway actually sold quality custom built PC's they were more expensive, but people gladly paid for them because they used good components. Then by the late 1990's they were competing against the lower end system to dominate the market, and end up with system that were Crap. In which Dell took over.
Apples approach is to maximize profit, not market share, if they can do both great, but they will error on the side of profit. So when company B makes a lower cost competitor Apple then tries to make a much better unit and charge more for it.
Now did they hit the limit? This article says yes, but we will see. Consumers always say the prices are too high.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've been a long time Apple fan. Switched everything over to Macs in the early 2000's.
Currently, I have an 11 year old Mac Pro I'm using and a 2007 iMac. Was hoping to upgrade the iMac before Christmas. But new ones didn't show.
The Mac Pro drives me crazy. Every time I start Word, it yells at me to upgrade my OS. I can't upgrade my OS. I have to get a new machine. The current Mac Pro is garbage. The new Mac Pro probably will be as well. And supremely over priced.
I don't mind spending a ton of money on a computer. As long as I know it will last. I don't like upgrading my hardware very often.
I'm not excited about getting off the platform. But I think it's about time to make it happen.
While I have no doubt that lowering prices would significantly increase demand, I wonder how much raising prices even more would decrease demand. Many many people are completely committed to iPhones, and will be willing to pay much more than the current prices to not have to switch to Android. I wonder if Apple would actually make the biggest profit by fleecing these people instead of going after people who are more price sensitive and are willing to switch or already have switched to Android.
Increasing prices even further would kill the 1-2 year upgrade cycle they try to push everyone into. Why pay $1500+ for a new phone when your 2 year old phone still works fine and is maybe even subjectively superior to the new model due to "upgrades" that affect usability? People are already starting to hold on to their iPhones longer. It's part of the reason why Apple worked with all the carriers to start those plans that are effectively 1-2 year leases where you upgrade your phone each year to the new model.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I'm an iOS developer and a longtime Apple fan, but I'm having trouble finding a reason to upgrade from my iPhone 6S (even though Apple's offering me $200 in trade-in value for it).
I think you mean that as a critique, but really that's the best recommendation you could make for buying Apple products.