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Apple Says It Could Miss $9 Billion In iPhone Sales Due To Weak Demand (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple CEO Tim Cook published a letter to investors today warning of weaker than expected first-quarter earnings, citing "fewer iPhone upgrades than we had anticipated." The weakened demand came primarily from China, although Cook notes that "in some developed markets, iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be." In his letter, Cook offers several explanations for the lower earnings guidance: earlier launch timing of the iPhone XS and XS Max compared to the iPhone X, the strength of the US dollar, supply constraints due to the number of new products Apple released in the fall, and overall economic weakness in some markets. But the core issue remains simple: people just aren't buying as many new iPhones as Apple hoped. All in all, Apple's revised Q1 guidance forecast is dropping by up to $9 billion in revenue compared to its original estimate.
Someone is getting fired!
Oh wait, probably not since Tim Cook is a pushover, just coasting on past work and not expecting new innovation from anyone.
Guess they should have realized they were pricing themselves out of the market earlier.
How come they have those **thick** black glasses and those beards.
Those glasses are like something from the warden in the Shawshank Redemption.
1940's glasses.
It is what it is
I wonder if the China tariff stuff gets resolved this month, if that would improve the outlook a lot since most o the miss is supposed to be from China.
It's going to be down even so though, as it seems like it's not just China...
The funny thing is Apple at the last keynote was talking about wanting users to have longer upgrade cycles. The wish came true, just a bit early. :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't think that it will be just Apple feeling the pinch. We've really hot and passed the point of peak smartphone. At this stage, improvements will really only be in screen quality and processor. I believe that the improvements are less groundbreaking and more incremental.
Perhaps people are wising up to the game.
I too could miss $9 billion in iphone sales due to weak demand if no one bids on my ebay listing.
fuck apple!
I bet if they added headphone jacks again, the new phones would sell like hotcakes. Who wants to upgrade when there's a huge decrease in functionality?
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
Non-replaceable battery, slowed old phones, no headphone jack, increased prices, tiny batteries, huge edge to edge screens... that almost make holding the phone without pressing buttons impossible... rounded slippery glass phones that break, complete crap desktop sync software (iTunes), crap gimped mobile webpages and apps, inability to download music from 3rd party websites, crap macintoshes... the list goes on and on.
Personally, I loathe smart phones now.
The last phone that I owned that I liked was an IPhone 4.
If Apple wants my business, they need to get rid of Ives and Cook for good... and fix their shit... in a big way.
Is "fewer iPhone upgrades than we had anticipated." applespeak for "we though we could still get away with ripping people off"
So somewhere along the line corporations and bankers lost their shit, and decided to ignore reality and act as if you can grow annually forever.
At a certain point, the market is saturated with phones and tablets, and no amount of wishing by analysts will mean you can keep growing your sales indefinitely -- but somehow this is how they view these things.
I really don't understand where this bit of stupidity came from, there was always going to reach a point where Apple just can't keep selling as many iPhones.
I mean, I have an iPhone 6S (I think) that work pays for. It's got a headphone jack, and Otterbox case, and does everything I require it to. Short of breaking it, I have no idea why I'd replace it ... there simply isn't a feature in a phone in the last few years that I've felt I couldn't live without.
Suddenly people realize that Apple can't actually keep doing this, and it's the end of the world.
They have lost their momentum. They used to make great products that just worked. Perfectly. They have been living on that reputation and it's about over.
Corporatism != Free Market
The weakened demand came primarily from China, although Cook notes that "in some developed markets, iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be."
The writing was on the wall when, for the 1st time, Apple increased iPhone trade-in credit in late November by up to $100 to get lure people in to buy the iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max, and then extending the offer to other countries like China, Japan, and Australia, and throughout Europe a month later.
it's the price for being courageous
bring out your strawmen; warm up your hyperbole; put a fresh set of batteries in your whataboutisms and start your ipologies!!
In his letter, Cook offers several explanations for the lower earnings guidance
And he never once mentioned the jacked up prices of the new Apple offerings nor the lack of innovation that has led to Apple's quality being par with competitors'.
Cook has neither the vision nor the control that Jobs had. The latest phones have Lightning ports instead of the industry-standard USB-C, dropping the headphone jack, but the Mac lines all offer USB-C. A competent CEO with control over his various divisions, as Jobs was, would have standardized on USB-C for all products. Cook simply does not wield enough power within his own house to make that happen. Jobs moved Apple to eschew the PS/2, serial, and parallel ports in favor of a single standard, USB, and that took vision and control: Cook has neither.
Cook wastes Apple's time and resources on content creation, bogus iTunes adventures like music streaming, and so forth. Apple needs to recenter itself around its core competencies: hardware and software. Forget "thinner" and remember what "pro" used to mean. Revive the 2012 MacBook Pro design with its thick but accessible, repairable, tough-as-a-tank system.
My 2012 MBP has a massive dent in one corner from being dropped onto Frankfurt Airport's hard, stone floor: the aluminum deformed, but neither the screen nor any other component was harmed. I've spilled an embarrassing amount of beer, water, and champagne onto the keyboard and drained each out the optical drive; it still keeps on ticking. Why would I buy a Cook-era MBP whose useless touch-bar will fail due to heat issues? How would I deal with all the dongles?
Creimertard. Delete thread.
I didnâ(TM)t upgrade because of two factors:
1. They no longer offer a current phone model with the form factor I want.
2. There were no deals which would have avoided me paying a monthly fee on top of my mobile service costs.
â"-
I refuse to pay full price for a phone. Period. Especially if theyâ(TM)re not going to see me a phone in the size I prefer.
So, normally I would have upgraded my phone and they would have had some sort of sale to someone. This is the first time since 2008 when it was >2 years between phone purchases that I havenâ(TM)t upgraded and it has absolutely nothing to do with the stupid headphone jack.
How is the fuck do you "miss sales" that never were?
What I mean is if no one wants it then it wasn't missed. Rather, it was built in vain.
This is the biggest fuck up since the launch of Apple Maps. Actually much worse since Apple Maps was just embarrassing but this is fucking up their earnings. Somebody needs to get fired for this shit. Tim Cook if necessary, but at least shitcan whatever stupid Stanford/Harvard MBA douchebag who fucked up the pricing.
But honestly, once Warren Buffet invests heavily in a tech stock, you know its days of success are behind it. Buffet was gushing over IBM maybe a decade ago, now look at that. Luckily, last time Apple stock split, I unloaded like half the shares, and put it into Microsoft.
I bet if they added headphone jacks again, the new phones would sell like hotcakes. Who wants to upgrade when there's a huge decrease in functionality?
@yorgasor nailed it.
The iPhone was an iPod that could make phone calls first and foremost. Somehow that was forgotten and those Audiophiles among us have slowly become increasingly annoyed with Apple as they have:
- Taken away the Headphone jack
- Destroyed the usability of iTunes as a Jukebox (I mean seriously it turned into an App Store Device management system)
- Caused Massive AppleID Identity Crisis As Apple tried to conflate iCloud with Me.com/Mac.com and iTunes DRM Log ins
- Arbitrarily and without my authorization erased all my local music from my iPhone in a Vain attempt to get me to Stream from the Cloud Driving my Data Rates into the Sky while simultaneously putting all my music into buffer-hell
- Artificially Kept Storage capacity behind the curve of progress, We should have Terrabytes of local storage by now, But NOOOOOOO That goes against their motivation for a cloud ($Subscription)
Sigh..... Stallman was right..... I should just chunk my iPhone 6s and just go back to a moto Razr.....
People are Content with their current phones.
After all, they paid Through the Nose for their current iPhone, and are not willing to drop even more their hard-earned cash for yet another upgrade that isn't really a substantial improvement over what they have. Sure, it's a status symbol and all that, but people don't all have the same level of disposable income as they used to.
Didn't the PC market go through this a while back?
Isn't Microsoft going through this yet again over Windows 7 vs Windows 10, and won't they be feeling same "loss of profits" bite when it comes to the next iteration of Windows?
You can certainly tell that Microsoft holds a substantial share of Apple by the way they make the same mistakes.
Give us something fucking amazing...
[($)]
I have an iPhone 7 and never really missed the headphone jack. I've been using portable music devices for decades and those ports always seem to eventually develop shorts or had poor insulation or shielding problems which made a big annoying startling static POP in the headphones when you plugged them in or just wiggled the cable a little. It's time for that port to go. I don't get any static noises that with the lightning port.
Also, if I'm spending $500 on a something, well another $9.99 for a dongle isn't going to be a deal breaker.
What was/is scummy about Apple is that they never threw in the dongle with the phone to begin with, which might cost Apple $1 at best. That always stuck of pure greed.
I'm not expecting that to happen. China's playing the long game and waiting it out.
While that is traditionally China's strength, they do not have that luxury.
The Apple guidance in a way, is a small window to how tariffs are actually hurting the Chinese economy. They cannot afford to play the long game here; the U.S. can, and Trump would. Do you seriously think there will not be major unrest within a year if things carry on as they are?
China's willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.
Yes but not both legs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We have fooled some of the people all of the time. But we can't fool all of the people.
There were no deals which would have avoided me paying a monthly fee on top of my mobile service costs.
This is exactly what bit Apple in the ass. The carriers got greedy and spun it like they were doing you a favor ("No contracts! No more ETFs!"), when in reality it just enabled them to jack up the costs of the phones (since now you're generally financing the full MSRP). And yeah, initially the cost of service did go down, but looking at today's plan prices, we seem to be right back to where we started back when carriers used to give you a new flagship phone for $200 with contract - except now you don't get the discounted phone.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Apple should be very concerned about who is making negative statements about Apple products today.
In the past it was mostly hate-anything-Apple-trolls, but today many of the 'Apple has lost it's way',"Apple is crap', ' Apple is way overpriced' complaints are now coming from past Apple customers who do not see any valid reason to spend $2000+ to upgrade their old 2010 iMac or 2012 Macbook Pro to an inferior product that has no function keys, a mouse that has a charging port on the bottom, fewer ports, and keyboards that feel like you are typing on jello. For that much money you expect something that stands out from the rest, but their repeat customers just don't see Apple as having those products or the perception of having those stand-out products anymore.
Look at their greed: they release looooong overdue Macbook Air and macMinis with mediocre upgraded specs and less ports in late 2018, then jack up those prices by $300. Pure blatant greed.
I bet if they added headphone jacks again
The iPhone has been jack-less since the 7. The iPhone jumped the shark with the X - when Apple decided to go fucking nuts with the "flagship" model starting at $1k, and they haven't looked back.
Dare I say it, the other problem with the X and later models, is that the iPhone has ceased to be intuitive to operate. You have to just know where/how you're supposed to swipe to make stuff happen, and Steve Jobs is probably spinning in his grave. I'm sure this has put off a lot of the older generations from upgrading.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
since users found that apple was secretly throttling their phones causing problems on purpose it was bound to happened. getting the battery replace is just so much cheaper for a perfectly good phone. besides iphones are just too expensive to replace yearly now.
At $1,100 and $1,200 USD for an iPhone X (what ever), I just kept my iPhone 7. Still working. I guess for their next trick, Apple will start bricking phone 3 versions or older. At which point, Android, here I come.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Since Apple doesn't care about the desktop any more, they may as well launch a dock so people can justify that >1K spend for what is, essentially, a full PC in their pocket.
Make a dock with: 4xUSB2/3, USBC, Thunderbolt or whatever, dual HDMI out, 4x Line in/out/mic with *good* DACs (ie., a decent bedroom studio sound rig), gigabit ethernet and a next-gen GPU to switch over for gaming maybe, and dual SSD slots for expanded storage.
Hell, even better, someone *other* than Apple needs to do this. Smartphones should converge with PCs and a universal docking solution so we can just carry around our main machines and plug in wherever as required.
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES AND PROPAGANDA NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
[,,,] Who wants to upgrade when there's a huge decrease in functionality?
Who wants to upgrade when there's a huge decrease in durability?
There, FTFY.
The high-end phones are "good enough" that people don't feel the need to upgrade them. The mid- and especially low-end phones still need to be upgraded because they become obsolete more quickly, having started off further behind in capability. They are now the largest growth segment, and the vast majority of it is in China and India. Huawei and Xaiomi have been the primary beneficiaries. It's also traditionally a market segment that Apple has eschewed, so Apple will feel the pinch more than any other smartphone maker.
It used to be that every year or so, you could upgrade your iPhone, pay about the same, but get a ton of features that you’re not sure how you lived without before. Sure, those features existed on android phones, but none were integrated quite as well. Now, you wait a year and there aren’t any significant feature changes. You literally just pay more for a slightly better phone. Maybe they could have made it years ago for the same price. Apple’s business model went from selling an improved user experience, to milking every last drop until customers stopped. Hopefully they finally reached the inflection point where they start releasing new features they’ve been keeping in their back pocket, but have they lost their customer’s trust?
If their revised guidance is correct, it will still be the second best quarterly earnings in Apple's history: about $4B lower revenue than a year ago, but $5B more than 2 years ago.
Sure, they sell less than expected, but from the start of the letter:
- Revenue of approximately $84 billion
- Gross margin of approximately 38 percent
That is still good profit for a quarter by any metric.
Many people prefer to use their phones longer, the price to swap is high nowadays, and I don't find most improvements that noticeable except for the cameras in the latest top smartphones which now yield pretty good results.
I changed the battery of my 5 year old 6 Plus and together with the "efficient" IOS12, it is still pretty usable with the latest OS.
I can see myself upgrading end of this year to this year's "XS2" or whatever it will be called. 6 years of usage of a phone is pretty ok. Many of my friends think alike, they like their iphones and will use theirs as long as possible.
Though I am quite impressed by the general quality of some affordable Android phones (a friend showed me his son's Xiaomi, and I found it very nicely made at a killer price), I will likely stay with Apple, walled garden and all. I do find the near seamless icloud data syncing between my phone, ipad, mac and apple tv truly pleasant and worry-free. that is worth something to me.
Thanks to trump Chinese companies like hauwei will corner the market now that apple is cut off. By the time heâ(TM)s reversed his stupid policy the damage will be done and American business will be permanently disadvantaged.
Lost sales suit somewhere...
[($)]
Yeah, I recently watched a friend (who is a mobile app developer) and long time iPhone user, try to figure out how to set a particular camera mode on the new iPhonex, gave up after a few minutes...
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES AND PROPAGANDA NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING
Seriously. I know this is an American iphone wankathon but how much tech does one need? Does everyone's lives have yo revolve around phone-tech and all manner of web2.0 crap?
It's simple..... Follow the money. I want to buy a6s for my wife and an XR or 8+ for me, but the prices are too high. And the XR has a sub 1080p screen.
We should give them some bailout money before it gets any worse for them.
It's not necessarily all the new issues that have come along. And it's not that the current iPhones are so good people don't want to upgrade. It's the issues they have had from the beginning that are biting them in the ass:
* No replaceable battery
* No MicroSD card slot
* A texting app that won't actually send an SMS to a non-iPhone by default, and which diverts every text you do send to another iPhone through their servers
* Updates that intentionally drain your battery on older models
* Updates that make simple things like your charger stop working, or which intentionally disable phones with third-party repairs
This is all stuff Apple has done from the beginning. They treated the phones as disposable, and the on-phone storage as some sort of precious commodity, like we were back in the 90's and there are severe silicon shortages. Their institutional arrogance was through the roof - iPhones will only work well out of the box with Apple services or Apple servers and getting them to import or export information elsewhere is just painful. People looked the other way and forgave them that because, at least with Apple stuff, iPhones mostly just worked.
Every one of those issues, though, is a goodwill sink. When iPhones were priced less and, at least with their own gear, just worked, then the sinks on goodwill were less than the features you got, and they had sales growth. However, when you add removing the headphone jack, back-to-back updates which have disabled some sort of third party charger or device, and successive generations that have gotten more expensive for what... a further reduction in dot pitch you need a microscope to discern, with all that people ask themselves if iPhone is worth the aggravation. And once it stops being a bit thick everywhere you go with Apple hype, people start to realize they bought into something that's not so shiny after all.
All Apple knows is fewer people are upgrading. What they don't (can't) fully know is how many previous iPhone users are actually not just not upgrading but jumping ship to a more open platform. I suspect it's a lot more than you think. I don't think the slowdown in sales is the west dissing Huawei and China getting all national pride about phones. I suspect what we are seeing is Apple starting to reap the results of a lot of anti-customer policies they have had from the beginning. Hype can plaster over treating your customers like shit for a little while. Not forever.
Apple should not hace stopped using QCOM modem and should have released a 4.7 inch iphone with touch id
My Samsung S5 is wearing out (accelerometer stopped working in November). Here's what I want to replace it: an S5 with more memory.
I don't want a faster processor (unless it gets more flops per watt). I don't want a higher res screen. I don't want a screen that goes to the edge so that I have to hold it up with just my telepathic powers. I don't want a better camera. I JUST WANT MY FUCKING PHONE that I've been using for years without any issues.
The current S9 is £600 while a boxed S5 is available for £120. It's a no-brainer, so whatever Samsung spent on developing and marketing the S9 (and the S6-8) was wasted as far as I'm concerned as they achieved nothing of any value to me.
What will eventually force my hand is Google withdrawing support for older hardware and leaving me exposed to security threats.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Why do we need "new features"?
Smartphones are small mobile generic personal computers. What they can and cannot have is exactly like with big PCs. And there we already went through all the useful and useless features and periphery and everything.
All that's gonna change is processors getting faster, memories getting bigger, and I/O quality getting higher.
None of which we actually need anymore. I’ve got 8 times 2 freakin' GHz in my hand for under $200. It's good enough!
This is purely a bug of capitalism: Companies think they always have to keep "innovating", *no matter what*, because otherwise they'd all be the same, and there would be no reason to not just buy the cheapest one. ;))
But there's noting wrong with that, actually. Only Apple having built its whole stupid cancer of a business around that now vanished illusion of a unique selling point.
I wonder if they'll adapt and sell cheaper phones, double down and die like idiots, or be bailed out by the apparently selectively (only to banks, car makers, Apple?, etc) socialist states of America.
And remove that stupid ass notch, as well as bring back the 4" option.
You simply do not make them. A sale is something you have to win, not something you can take for granted.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES AND PROPAGANDA NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL WE ARE COMING FOR YOU
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
How can bluetooth, an open standard with publicly known API and publicly known specs be restricted by iPhone? What a shame Apple, what a shame.
Yesterday, theverge highlighted this as "Apple says cheap battery replacements hurt iPhone sales - The easier it is to replace a battery, the less willing people are to buy a new iPhone", which was a scandalous way to finally admit they knew and intended to fucking with batteries on purpose.
Today, I find it nice they downgraded that article and replaced exactly the same news to a stock market insight - "yeah nah the largest company in the world won't make as much sales as it expected, likely will still profit anyways, GG".
That always stuck of pure greed.
If you think the dongle is their only example of pure greed..... you have deep problems, my friend.
JFC, what a bunch of fucking idiots.
With pro level machines, machines priced for education and the general public to mitigate and ups and downs in sales.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Your not missing anything. You projected wrong. Guess the Disciples of Jobs have grown up.
Their problem was the profit trap. They were making so much profit off a single device that innovating into other products, even though they could easily afford it, was basically too risky because there's a good chance those products wouldn't have been as profitable as the phones. If you spend a billion in profits investing in a new device that only brings in 500 million in profits, you've basically lost 500 million dollars.
This holds back companies from innovating into new products or even substantially altering their existing products, as nearly any change won't return the profits it cost to deliver it.
IMHO, I think Apple's level of control over the iPhone was too great, too. They were unwilling to open up the platform very much for fear it would reduce their control of the product over the longer run. In theory an iPhone could do a lot more if there was greater hardware connectivity and software flexibility, but they've kept a lot of those innovation avenues cut off or severely restricted.
IMHO, Apple needs to more seriously look at making the iPhone the core platform of their entire computing platform, replacing low-end Macs with docks that let iPhones be the actual computer. They don't sell enough Macs at that level to really hurt them and it might allow some growth from people with iPhones and basic PC/laptop computers who won't switch to Mac computers but might be interested in a "desktop" that is driven by an iPhone. The CPU power is pretty much there for basic office productivity.
I have been asking myself for a few years now how people can be so blind to the {add any high tech market} industry. With cell phones there is a yearly release of the new 'flagship' model, that is always just marginally better than the previous generation. Then literally within a month of the release we are seeing 'leaked' images of the next 'new and improved' model. Each years new model is more expensive than the last too.
This is not an apple problem alone, although they could fix their problem by dipping into their cash and truly coming up with a new phone that blind the people with its magic. Sadly for Apple that is not the case and they are trying to peddle a 1K phone to people that just bought a 1K phone from them within 2 years.
The vast majority is now seeing the shell game for what it is and speaking with their wallets.
I bet if they added headphone jacks again, the new phones would sell like hotcakes. Who wants to upgrade when there's a huge decrease in functionality?
The missing headphone jack is a huge dealbreaker for me, so I will stubbornly keep rocking my iPhone 6 for as long as it takes.
If you support a company that charges huge margin, this is what happens. They keep increasing it.
I switched to Android recently, and am happier at much lower price. Even the $200 android phones have better display than iPhone 8 and XR.
Besides, the phones without home button don't look like apple anyway.
Wtf does the iPhone even do anymore.
You have no headphone jack, no expandable storgae, notch, huge bulgey side bezels and you have to run iOS.
What are the pros? The phone is insanely expensive and it's one of the most featureless phones you can buy.
The 22 immutable laws of marketing.
Tim Cook and crew should read it once again. I never owned an iPhone and never considered buying one. Yet until this years lineup I always knew what the newest and best iphone was.
Now I don't anymore.
It's a total disaster in brand and lineup bloat. If they carry on, the iPhone will lose it's brand value in 2 years or less.
Apples value proposition has been degrading sharply in the last few years and now they've reached a tipping point. If I were in charge I'd weed 2 thirds out of their product lineup, reduce iPhones to 3 models in varying screen size and focus on quality and minimalism again.
Apple is also a fashion brand, so they can pivot on a dime, offer less features and battery for a sky high price, but not if their catalogue is as confusing and broad as Ikeas.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Apple Says It Could Miss $9 Billion In iPhone Sales Due To Effing Insane Pricing
So, $9bn huh? What's that, like 36 new iPhones or something?
It is more about people not appreciating what goes into the Xs and Xr lines, as opposed to price. /s
Wait... So, making shitty business decisions isn't the problem. Its the markets fault for not buying!
...it's a "replacement".
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Oh yes... you would rather have your car complete stop working in the opposing lane. Leaving you stuck there for people to run into and most likely dead.
vs
With reduce power, but still operative car, hit the brakes and return back to your lane with as a failed passing attempt but alive. Using your really, really, really bad analogy.
While true that most consumers do not care about factor X,Y,Z that much on their own; Look at this thread, it's price, repairability and feature loss/incompatability for obsolescence to maximize profits. Without having compelling new features to offset this they are left with inertia selling, and Apple users are increasingly choosing to keep their devices longer. We are not currently seeing a mass migration of users to Android anyware but China, but now English speaking carriers are not subsidizing Apple products anymore they are looking increasingly poor value. Tim Cooks words not mine
Back in the 80's PC wars, IBM made no improvements to the PC and just milked the revenue stream.
We're seeing APple follow the same failed playbook with the Iphone assuming market share alone would drive future sales.
Nope, nobody in their right mind is going to pay a grand for an small tablet with a cell antenna and a phone app - cause really, "phone" is just an app. It fails as a tablet, it fails as phone - no new features worthy of the price gouging
"Destroyed the usability of iTunes as a Jukebox"
Spot on. They completely ruined it.
Apple misses expectations slightly, and investors go into a selling frenzy. Apple does a bit better than expected, and investors go into a buying spree. No wonder we are doomed to having market crises every so often, with such hysterical, unbalanced people. Nothing more stupid and irrational that this market.
I should just chunk my iPhone 6s and just go back to a moto Razr.....
Now that was a phone.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Or fingerprint id. I do not need, nor want, face recognition. I'm happy with my iPhone 8.
I don't want an MacBook with soldered on SSD (for upgrade or potential data recovery), glued in battery, keyboard that get stuck by dust, and even more thermal throttling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... The iPhone is a similar story, I simply want a normal headphone jack, for traveling, cheap travel headset replacements in case of, also the price is way too high, especially in Europe: https://rene.rebe.de/2017-09-1... and last but not least the glass backs of iPhones just add another unnecessary way to break your iPhone when it drops the usual once or twice a year (or more often for less careful users), ..! :-/
Quite clearly they're continuing to delude themselves and miss the point that people aren't buying new iPhones because they're over a thousand dollars/pounds/euros and the public have turned round and all said as one "You must be fucking joking."
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
In context of this article mid-range and premium phones from other manufacturers cost a fraction of the cost and even add features like usb-c, microsd, large batteries, better screens, FM radio, IR blasters, fingerprint ID , you can even have a better camera if you want, and they are not complaining about weak demand.
I bet if they added headphone jacks again, the new phones would sell like hotcakes. Who wants to upgrade when there's a huge decrease in functionality?
I'd bet against you. Not because headphone jacks aren't a compelling feature (they are), but because they aren't the reason for lack of demand as shown by previous iPhones.
The simple problem is: Why do you need and iPhone X? What does it do? The answer is absolutely nothing that you're not already somehow doing. The entire phone market reached that stage one or two years ago. There's nothing new. Features are incremental or are changing slightly in terms of usability, but there's nothing "new". Yeah FaceUnlock! My finger already unlocks my phone, that' only a slight usability change. OLED screen! ... meh incremental, there's nothing wrong with the previous screen (in fact it's damn awesome as it was).
Dare I say it, the other problem with the X and later models, is that the iPhone has ceased to be intuitive to operate. You have to just know where/how you're supposed to swipe to make stuff happen
Uhhh, Apple has ALWAYS been like that.
I switched to iPhone last year because of my concerns with Google/Android, which I had used for years.
I have acclimated to how Apple wants things done on iPhone, but I can tell you categorically that Androids are laid out so much easier and more intuitively than iPhones.
That is not how money works. You would be right in saying that their revenue/profit ratio would decrease, but overall their total profits would increase, with an expanded range including less profitable products.
In context of this article Apple could well have increased their Profit ratio by charging more for their phones. Their 8% loss in market share shows how little anyone cared. In reality their reliance on one product shows how fragile Apple was in China.
I bet if they added headphone jacks again, the new phones would sell like hotcakes. Who wants to upgrade when there's a huge decrease in functionality?
How much you want to bet someone at Apple a few years ago said "hey, in couple of years, the smartphone market will be saturated, and sales will slow. Let's remove the headphone jack NOW, so people will upgrade to phones without one, then we can add it back in when sales slow down to get people to toss their otherwise perfectly good phones"?
Massive drop in sales in a major market with a CEO not offering a way to reverse this. Even in a quarter with a refresh of their product line. This is not the usual drop marginally below market expectations. This is a drop on already low expectations set by Apple.
The fact that problems domestically were hinted at did not help.
In reality shares have already dropped this year a third. The bad news for Apple keeps coming. Tim Cook is not offering anything to offset this apart from inertia selling and services.
The guidance claims "record activations" in North America, which we can take as truthful since Apple has no desire to be accused of misleading investors. The misplaced grumbling about the headphone jack has nothing to do with the real problem: China.
There are a few reasons for the weakness in China, not least of which is the current trade debacle, but also some patriotism on the part of the Chinese and the anger at the treatment of Huawei and its executive here in the west.
On top of that, WeChat is the real platform in China, not Android or iOS. You pay for things through WeChat. It has its own App Store. It runs on everything. It's a market where Apple has to compete on factors other than its ecosystem. They still trade on their luxury status, but with all the other factors at hand, it becomes harder to retain customers.
With the new guidance, Apple will still have its second best quarter EVER, and the guidance is a pullback of 7%â"the only other time they've lowered their guidance it was 10%, in 2002 and it was a couple hundred million dollars.
Apple has some real work ahead, no doubt, but misidentifying the problem as high prices or lack of a headphone jack wonâ(TM)t solve anything.
With over a dozen emacs processes and many times that number of windows currently open on my elderly Mac, Apple's decision to migrate the ESC key to that changeable bar thingie killed the MacBook line for me. What's the point of a laptop if I have to bring a separate keyboard?
Can someone in the know please explain to me the origin of this new spam message that I am seeing in nearly every discussion thread? What is a "creimertard"?
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Apple's products are tanking not because of "weak demand". That is a LIE. It's because they keep ratcheting up the price for increasingly SHITTY devices. They are surpassing the limit they've been coming up closer and closer to, of how much they can FORCE people to pay for shit they don't actually WANT. The result is people (like ME,) categorically REFUSING to buy their defective-by-design SHIT.
PERIOD.
It's not "weak demand". That's BULLSHIT. It's that they ripped out the headphone jack, made them thinner and larger, meaning harder to operate with one hand, and less convenient to slip into a fucking pocket, removed the bezels by which I HOLD MY iPHONE, (gone,) removed the necessary HOME BUTTON, added funky, not-ready-for-prime-time "facial recognition," to replace the not-ready-for-prime-time, unreliable bullshit fingerprint sensor, and then to add insult to injury, added a STUPID, UGLY, IDIOTIC FUCKING NOTCH, (not necessarily in that order,) and then had the temerity to demand upwards of a THOUSAND DOLLARS for this ugly, stupid, useless piece of shit phone!
I'm SO fucking glad I bought several iPhone SE's before the stupid goddamned motherfuckers discontinued them. Because they're the last iPhones, and the last Apple products, I think, that I'm ever buying.
Fuck Apple.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Been holding out for upgraded SE (OLED & A12 in similiar chassis = ideal). I was last year too, the year they puked out the X with the face gimmick. Meh. This year they crank out the XS (decent) the XS Max (phablet?) and the XR (my wife loves her red one). And for me...they killed the form factor I wanted. That's the upgrade? Condemned to forever holding what feels like a bar of soap for a phone? Getting tired of Big Fruit. I don't care if its another .00001mm thinner Jony Ive. I don't care that the starving orphan in China at Pegatron is using a fifty-axis laser CNC to cut out the notch or whatever. I just don't care.
Time to bite bullet and get S9 and custom ROM looks like. Man, too bad I liked iPhones.
I bought a new iPhone 6 4 years ago. For the same price I can now buy a new 6s. The new X's are at 2X - 3X markup (the "cheap" XR costs X1.5).
While I like IOS substantially more then Android I am interested in the better privacy of Apple, my next device will be an Android.
Once upon a time an iPhone did cost as much as the top Android offerings, now not so much.
I moved to Android as well after almost 10 years of iPhones, as the missing headphone jack was a dealbreaker for me. Not going to play games with dongles.
I'm also on an SE. And I only bought that because when they started taking the headphone back, I bought it for when my Palm Pre3 finally died. (about 6 months later, when the security certs were slowly expiring, then I cracked the screen).
I've been on it for almost 2 years now, and I'm really not a fan. I can't even sync it to my laptop, as I stopped updating the OS when my Adobe Creative Suite started losing applications that would run. (you'd think keeping iOS and MacOS both on older versions would work, but nope, iTunes refuses to see the phone, even though photos transfer across just fine ... and without iTunes, I can't set it up for wireless sync)
I'm only wedded to MacOS because of software (BBEdit, bits of Adobe CS that still work (*sob* not InDesign) ... but even then, I generally get 5+ years out of a laptop, and I have no desire to go to one of the touchbar ones.
What I'd really like to find is anyone who's mapped out what apps best replicate WebOS on Android. (a calendar program that doesn't show you midnight to 8am when all of your entries for that day are in the evening; a mail program that lets you have more than one message open so you can copy & paste from them; a way to select w/out having your finger block what you're selecting; probably too much to ask for a real keyboard.)
But well, if companies want to sell luxury products to the masses, they need masses that have money ... and although people might not be as bad off as they were a few years back, I suspect that much is become of belt tightening, not just marginally better income)
(I was also a sysadmin for a company that had moved over to Apple XServes ... by the time I left last year, they were using Mac Minis w/ attached storage because of our problems w/ other companies ... but that also mean we had less CPU and RAM as we were "upgrading" our machines. And Penguin RAIDs are a bit of a PITA under linux)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
The notch is nacho innovation!
The iphone 8 is the last iphone i'll ever own. I was willing to look past the headphone jack due to the fact that BT headphones are convenient, but, like others have mentioned, there is no more innovation with apple.
I'll keep this phone until it dies, or apple bricks it on purpose with an update.
If it wasn't for the fact Apple is a stock that a lot of 401 and retirement funds invest in. I would hand out crying towels, and go awwww... I'm sorry. But I don't want to see anyone's retirement ruined, even by companies I can not stand
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
They would have made one more sale if there was a headphone jack.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I'd argue that sales are predicated on demand but Windows 10 manages.
Tim needs to look around and dig Steve up somewhere...
I wouldn't discount the possibility that some part of this decline is due to Chinese consumer anger over the arrest of Meng Wanzhou (Huawei CFO) and the trade war being waged by the Trump administration.
Sauer
It's not weak demand. That's there. But $1,000 for a phone? Nope.
Why pay $1000 for stuff you don't need when a $500 one you can order online in the US direct from Apple is more than you need?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...still waiting on microSD card slot...
Or, more correctly, a vector processor, just like in large supercomputers. A great counterexample of, sadly, exactly your point. :)
Don't fool yourself into thinking that that face detection is anything more than a GPGPU program.
Ditto for any "AI", which is just a bunch of matrix multiplications of signals with state matrices, and is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike real natural fleshy neural networks.
Besides: Said face detection is a perfect example of exactly this useless-gimmick-adding behavior I criticized in my original comment. So thank you for that. :)
Or did you mean Kane Kramer worked for them in 1981, when he came up with the digital audio player (which was as big as a credit card, by the way)?
I also did not know Apple owned Nokia, when they invented the first Smartphone, the Nokia 9210 Communicator, based on the giving EPOC-based palm computers (Psion) mobile network functionality.
I give them tablets. Given their complete pointlessness, and quick fall back into obsolescence after the fad died down.
But funny, that you'd leave out the first MacOS. There are still people who don't know it was ripped off the Xerox Alto, just like Windows. You could have made it and convinced me! :P
I don't judge though. You can keep on living inside the Apple reality distortion bubble as much as you want, if that makes you cum.
Oh, come on, going Apple is like ascension into a higher dimension of being advancing your body, your mind, and your soul. The only people complaining are those who can't afford the price.
It's funny. Each and every day, I read posts on slashdot from passionate progressives who demand green initiatives, fair wages, and tons of social programs. Being of the same mindset, Apple delivers.
Yet, the bald truth is that all of these things, that you claim to love, cost money. This is the main reason behind the Apple tax, or why their products simply cost more. The green energy costs more. The attempt at policing slave labor at Foxxcon costs. The using of more green materials raises has a price tag.
It is easy to say you are a good progressive, and want all these things. It is another to ADULT, and actually pay for it.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Don't be silly. Steve Jobs is obvious swiping in his grave. The real question is, does he swipe left or right for heaven?
Guys, iPhone should cost as mush as Casio calculator in Walmart....
and Steve Jobs is probably spinning in his grave
If you apple people where smart, a few of you would take some shovels out there and dig up that piano crate Jobs was buried in. Thus release Zombie Jobs to go forth and clean some shit up.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I've never owned an apple product, and probably never will. And I know they didn't invent any of those things.
But I can still give them credit for making all those things fashionable must-have devices with actual usable interfaces.
In what world did removing copying and pasting (like the first iPhone did) make the interfaces more usable?
In what world did using finicky, rage-inducing touch screens with way too small buttons on them for your fingers and zero haptic feedback make interfaces more usable than a real actual keyboard (N900-/N950-style)?
In what world did removing the *file manager*, the most essential of all tools (together with the text editor), and literally *forbidding* any way to script the damn thing make it more usable?
All they did, was make it more *simple*. Which, given that we were waayy beyond the literally-so-retarded-they-can't-tie-their-own-shoes level of simplification, only translates to being another word for more *limited*. Which is the opposite of more usable.
It's pathetic: People can tie their shoes, can get a job, involving complex processes with countless variables, interfaces, branches and instructions so complex they have to learn them for years... and then they sit in front of a computer, and *deliberately and willingly* *turn off their entire brain*, and *demand* being treated like literal actual mentally retarded people that need to be spoon-fed even the most limited world of the most trivial concepts.
They should just *not* be allowed to use computers, if they act up like that. Until they man up and start doing their own shit *themselves*.
They could spend money on lots of things but blew more than that buying Apple shares on the market.
Carriers not sacrificing their profits to cover Apples massive cost is not greedy. It's just sensible. Why should the profit go to Apple not the carriers. As someone who buys better value phones I welcome lower carrier costs.
and Steve Jobs is probably spinning in his grave
If you apple people where smart, a few of you would take some shovels out there and dig up that piano crate Jobs was buried in. Thus release Zombie Jobs to go forth and clean some shit up.
Stick a magnet up him bum, wrap him in copper, and you might have enough energy from the spinning to power that 6 hour battery life!
They priced themselves out of 20% of their market. If they want to become a services company now their luxury brand image has gone, before another market follows. I have my bets on Russia
Just upgraded my phone with a 256gb for $30 life is sweet for Android users.
Lol you are suggesting a 2 1/2 year old phone for the price of 2 flagship Androids. No wonder China went Android even though they are made there.
I'm genuinely curious, what are you going switch to TR? Did "work" give you a desktop?
I know people who were MBP owners who went to a Windows Lenovo X1 (which had 16GB RAM, had a 512GB NVMe SSD, i7 of some description and cost less than £2K) in defiance of the new MBP keyboards. They're very happy with their choice and talk plenty about how Mac laptops now aren't what they were in the late 2000s/early 2010s - in the "old days" Apple used to ship things like remote controls in the box, AppleCare was affordable/convenient to use and what you got in your laptop was high-end even in comparison to "regular" laptops (although I've always been an Intel GPU chipset lover when it come to laptops myself).
I'm typing this on a 2012 MBP (with far lower specs than your 2013, still has a heavy DVD drive, came with a small SATA SSD etc) which has had broken keys for the past year and I badly need a new one. I live in hope that somehow Apple produce a physical machine I can't resist (I would like at least 3 USB-C ports AND a decent keyboard with a physical escape key!) but I guess an endgame is coming where they keep their current keyboard (touchbar and shallowness), remove the headphone jack, switch away from Intel CPUs and up the price (I can't afford to spend even £3K on a laptop). If it comes to that I'm unsure what I'll do... call it a day and buy a Chromebook?
"Me, I have free access for home to the Microsoft suite of software as well as the Adobe software.
Do I dump Final Cut 7 which has served me well for my home moves, and head to Adobe ?,"
Why dump? Your machine still does what you bought it to do and there's no rule preventing you from buying or building another PC for other OS.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."