Apple Might Debut 3 New iPhones in 2019 (fortune.com)

Apple is planning to release three new iPhone models this year, including a device to succeed the newly-created XR model, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. From a report: Apple will unveil direct successors to last year's iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. The iPhone XR, which is believed to have been the least popular of the three, will be updated with a model that comes with the same LCD display and similar design, according to the report. Apple is also considering adding a triple-lens camera system to one of the 2019 models in a bid to compete with Samsung and others that are readying similar camera systems, the Journal's sources said.

Comments

So what have we learned from this?

[alvinrod]

The iPhone XR, which is believed to have been the least popular of the three, will be updated with a model that comes with the same LCD display and similar design.

It doesn't appear as though Apple has learned anything.

Maybe another year of decreased sales will help them get the message.

Re:Each more boring

[Anonymous Coward]

and expensive than the last.

I overheard a reporter interviewing Tim Cook about that.

Reporter: "Why are iPhones so expensive?"

Cook: "Well, consider all the devices your iPhone replaces. Your phone, your camera, your watch, your appointment book, your music player, your video player, your GPS, your flashlight, your calculator, your handheld gaming device, your exercise tracker... surely it reasonable, when you consider how many other expensive devices you no longer need to own."

Reporter: "Then why are Android devices so much cheaper?"

Cook: "Ah! The inexpensive Android replaces just one device! The iPhone."

Isn't the real issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

That at these prices people will expect to keep these phones for a couple years. So what they really need to do is produce a much better and more impressive model in ~2 years so they get all the sales then after the 'financial pressure' of this past upgrade cycle is past, while providing price drops on their current phones to pull in any users who might otherwise defect when they find the need to upgrade (intentionally or not.)

Re:Isn't the real issue...

[lusid1]

I'd mod you up if I could because this is exactly correct. At current price points it is no longer a device you cycle out every 12-24 months, its now in the 24-36month bucket, or until it completely dies.
If they want to charge $1250 for a midrange phone that's their choice, but they shouldn't be so surprised when people decide to keep using the old one for an extra year.
They need to be planning now to figure out how to recover those deferred sales on the next cycle if they want keep those people in the ecosystem as their iPhone 7's start to die off.

Release the iPhone "SEX"

[xack]

The SE form factors, but with X features. It will sell billions.

Re:Well - Duh. This is a surprise

[avandesande]

I've suggested this before they should just have have the same models and attach a year to it with incremental upgrades like auto manufacturers do with cars. The whole new model thing is costly and passe and nobody cares anymore.

The Inevitable Slowing Down of Apple

[alaskana98]

Although you can arguably say that Apple invented the smartphone as we know it, they are now mired in an endless game of tug-of-war with their rivals Samsung and the rest of the Android clan. This is unfortunate because I feel they are pumping the lions share of their considerable resources into simply keeping up with the competitors that originally copied their ground breaking concept of what a phone could be.
I feel Apple needs to somehow break free of this endless 'boring' update cycle and release their newest earth shattering product. The only problem is I doubt the current leadership at Apple has what it takes to do this. Although nice, Bluetooth earbuds, smart speakers, and smart watchers and endless iterations of iPhones, iPads and laptops ain't going to cut it. They are going to need another device that is as paradigm shifting as the original iPhone was. I think if they still had Jobs this may have happened by now, but really who knows. I feel within the next 5 years or so Apple WILL need this type of product or they will again become increasingly irrelevant as they were in the mid to late 90's before the advent of the iPod rescued them from certain death. (Full disclosure - I own Apple products).

Re:The Inevitable Slowing Down of Apple

[Solandri]

Although you can arguably say that Apple invented the smartphone as we know it, they are now mired in an endless game of tug-of-war with their rivals Samsung and the rest of the Android clan. This is unfortunate because I feel they are pumping the lions share of their considerable resources into simply keeping up with the competitors that originally copied their ground breaking concept of what a phone could be.
I feel Apple needs to somehow break free of this endless 'boring' update cycle and release their newest earth shattering product.

The thing is, Apple didn't actually invent the smartphone-as-we-know-it. It was an evolutionary development that other phone manufacturers had slowly been migrating towards. LG was actually the first out the door with a smartphone with a capacitive touch display as its primary interface. And the Samsung evidence which was disallowed in the iPhone case (because they missed a filing deadline) showed that they had been working on similar iPhone-like phones before the introduction of the iPhone.

What Apple did (very successfully) was guess where this evolutionary development would lead in the future, and bet the house on a phone design further along this development path than any other phone manufacturer's at the time. And that bet rightly led to a massive financial windfall for them.

Since then, they have missed pretty much every other major evolutionary change to smartphone design. They openly ridiculed the trend towards larger phones (a phone with a 3.5" screen looks like a toy today). They missed the trend towards a wider aspect ratio. They've been hostile to a universal phone charging connector. They were late to follow the trend towards capacitive control buttons (instead of physical buttons). They were slower than the rest of the industry in adding LTE capability. They were late to incorporate NFC. They missed the trend towards OLED displays on flagship devices. They missed the trend towards bezel-less displays. They've played catch-up on all of these features.

They did get the trend to high-resultion displays right (though I'd argue that was obvious, and they just did it quicker than anyone else due to a design flaw in iOS). They helped make fingerprint sensors (which first showed up on a Motorola phone but was a niche product) standard. And I applaud their approach to security and privacy. But pretty much all their other "innovations" have been hostile to customers (glass back, non-swappable battery, removing the headphone jack, lack of expandable memory, lack of a way to directly transfer files between devices, walled garden for apps).

They're already selling 13 different models

[greenwow]

https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/

And Apple stores took down the signs showing which model is which and the prices. I went in December to buy a new phone, but I couldn't tell which model was which or how much they cost. This will make their model confusion even worse.

Please don't

[trawg]

My family bought my mum an Apple Watch for Christmas. Unfortunately I didn't check the label and it wasn't suitable for her phone - she had an iPhone 5S, and the new Watch requires an iPhone 6. Something we only found out on Christmas day.

So we arranged to get her a phone upgrade. It was complicated - I'm an Android user and while I keep half an ear out about Apple stuff, I kind of assumed there was just the iPhone X and a couple of variants.

But it turns out you can buy everything from an iPhone 7 up! There's the 7, 7+, 8, 8+, XR, XS, and XS Max. And of course for each model there are the different size variants. And colour variants.

So we had massive choice paralysis. Which of these is the best thing to get? What is the best long term investment? It seems like if I buy a 7, it is going to be "obsolete" the soonest. But the X series start at AUD$1000 and that seems like a ludicrous amount for a non-power-user who is actually perfectly happy with her iPhone 5S.

If the Watch hadn't been a consideration, I probably also would have thrown some Android options into the mix - if you already have to factor in a bunch of things, why not a couple more?!?

I'm sure Apple have a bunch of genius-level people that decide on their product line-up that know way more than me. But just from my experience, going through the process once it seems like a risky play to have so many choices beyond how many gigs and what colour the device should be. Making the response to "I need a new iPhone" really simple for everyone seems as important to me as making them all "Just Work".