Apple Replaced 11 Million iPhone Batteries in Its $29 Program (cnet.com)

Apple's $29 battery replacement program may have seriously dinged sales of its 2018 iPhone models. From a report: The company replaced 11 million iPhone batteries under the program, John Gruber of tech-focused blog DaringFireball reported Monday, citing Apple CEO Tim Cook at an all-hands meeting. Typically, the company replaces 1 million to 2 million batteries each year, DaringFireball noted. Cook cited the program's negative impact on Apple's revenue in a Jan. 2 sales warning to investors but didn't offer specific numbers.

Comments

Good

[sexconker]

Batteries should always be replaceable (ideally, by the end user).

Re:Good

[b0s0z0ku]

Because manufacturers are not offering them in higher-end phones, and other features are more important to lusers than a replaceable battery.

Re:Good

[ShanghaiBill]

There's no proof that thinness is an innate killer of user-replacability in batteries

Go look at the available phones with swappable batteries. They are NOT thin, at least not compared to an iPhone.

If instead of soldering a battery to the PCB, you put it into a plastic case, add electrical contacts, and put an access port with a latch on the case, you are obviously going to end up with a thicker phone.

nor that people wouldn't choose that if it were an option.

But it IS an option. There are phones out there with swappable batteries, and they are not big sellers.

People have a choice, and they are NOT choosing swappable batteries. You also have a choice. If you want one, go buy it.

Re:Good

[dgatwood]

This. Asking why people don't buy cell phones with removable batteries is like asking why iPhone users aren't buying phones with a headphone jack. The answer, of course, is that Apple no longer sells one.

To truly measure whether users care about a feature, you would have to have two nearly identical models whose only differences are that feature and any unavoidable side effects thereof. For example, you might have a model that has a removable battery at a slightly higher price and with a slightly thicker case. Without a proper control, you're comparing apples and oranges.

Re:New battery?

[Anonymous Coward]

What this demonstrates is how much Apple's sales are propped up by the lack of removable batteries and presence of their battery-saving, performance-crippling software.

To be fair the first few iterations of the iPhone were significant and worth the upgrade but really ever since the iPhone 6 there hasn't really been any reason to upgrade aside from the battery/performance issues, now that you can get a replacement battery and turn off the sneaky software "features" there's really no reason to spend money on the latest iPhone at all and people have realised that.

Re:New battery?

[guruevi]

I think it demonstrates more that $29 is a fair price for an OEM battery replacement. You can go to various outlets in local shopping malls to get your cell phone batteries replaced, they'll also end up costing close to $30-50 and people are happy to pay for it so people that really care about it, have it done.

Re: Cheaper than the alternative

[dnaumov]

A standard battery management procedure used by almost everybody when implemented by Apple suddenly becomes a new item because REASONS

Interesting item not considered -future sales bump

[SuperKendall]

The much larger than normal number of batteries sold, seemed to have led somewhat to a decline in new purchases that led to Apple's earnings warning.

That sent the stock down. But what I do not see anyone mulling over, are implications for the future... given the high degree of measured customer satisfaction from iPhone owners (90% +), this simply means that future sales have been deferred - not lost.

So at some point in the future, probably 1-2 years hence, there's going to be a bump in sales from all these people who got new batteries as they finally do upgrade...

Now an alternative to this scenario is: What if this gets more people accustomed to buying batteries to extend the life of phones? Even then it would just mean a longer delay, but it could lead to a deeper change in consumer behavior and generally longer ownership cycles, long term.

They shouldn't have released that number

[Voyager529]

That number only works if it assumes all 11 million people would have bought a new $1,000 iPhone instead - $11 billion makes up for the earnings expectations nicely.

However, that only works at the most superficial of levels. There's a whole cottage industry of mall kiosks and small-time repair shops that specialize in replacing spent batteries and cracked screens. Apple managed to massively undercut them at $29 (which is why the numbers are so high). Let's say that half of those 11 million people would have done any of the following:
-Gotten a $749 XR. 5.5 milion of those meets their projected earnings, but only barely. Make it a $599 iPhone 8, and now you're off by over a billion - not "oh f'k" money, but still enough to make investors plenty nervous.
-Gotten an Android phone.
-Had a third party change the battery.
-Gotten a secondhand iPhone 7.
-Stuck it out with their existing iPhone.

That also would have put them in a position where class action lawyers were tripping over themselves to get some iBucks. If that lawsuit was as large as the tenth largest payout in history - not impossible since it would likely include virtually every iPhone in the past decade - that's $3.2 billion just in the payout. That payout would make them miss their earnings by billions even if every battery replacement would have otherwise been a $1,000 XS.

The number indicates that even the slightest scrutiny prevents Apple from making their earnings numbers. In turn, this starts to indicate that Apple can't expect to make the fortunes off the Annual iPhone crowd they once did. IoT doesn't seem to be helping them; it's rare to find a description of a HomePod as a great-sounding also-ran and there's no indication that releasing the iRing or the iHue will push them into those markets. The Apple Car is vaporware, Apple being the new cable company could go either way (especially without a first party television to generate the hype for it), Tim doesn't seem to want to revisit the server room, and while I can't entirely dismiss a surprise-success like the iPod, Tim's had nearly a decade to do that and doesn't seem to have been able to figure out the next big thing just yet.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not an Apple hater, and I don't think they're going to die overnight. The iOS ecosystem is incredibly strong and will continue to be Apple's cash cow for quite some time to come. However, I think that investors are starting to get nervous. Maybe it'll be a good thing, and we'll see Apple revisit their creative design loyalists. Maybe Apple will shock everyone by finding a niche and owning it. Or maybe, Apple will finally prove to itself, to Microsoft, to Google, to Facebook, and ultimately to Wall Street, that Big Tech has settled in with Big Oil and Big Pharma as being boring, stable, and iterative.

Re:Cheaper than the alternative

[edwdig]

It's not a hardware design defect, it's a basic fact of how electronics work. It wasn't an issue of *just* CPU usage. As phones got more complex, the difference in power draw between "idle" and "everything in use" became bigger over time. The other big factor is batteries don't work as well in cold weather. The big problem people were seeing was if they used their phones outdoors in winter weather with a bunch of things going at once, the battery couldn't keep up. Stress the phone hard in conditions when the battery won't work well and you get problems.

And they didn't lie about it, they've had a note about it on their support site ever since they launched the fix.

And the fix wasn't a big deal. My 6S used to shut down often in the winter months, even when it was brand new. I haven't had it happen since they issued the fix, and there's been no noticeable impact on performance.

Totally false, here's the real deal

[SuperKendall]

It's clear the iPhone 6-series has a hardware design defect that caused shutdowns when its CPU hit heavy loads when running on batteries with reduced capacity.

Hey buddy - ALL PHONES have this issue. Just try searching for "Android sudden shutdown battery".

What Apple did was say, hey lets make it so the phone only shuts down when it's truly out of power, by throttling back performance a little bit, rather than just suddenly die at 10 or 20% left just because you played a game or something, or the battery was getting old.

Instead of being lauded for helping phone users get the thing they treasure most above all else - battery life - Apple was pummeled for helping out users, and even though this criticism was utterly unfair, Apple took the high road and said "well how about cheap replacement batteries all around that restore full performance!".

Now you can choose which path you want phone to take battery wise -but of course because people are not utter morons they 99% choose to use the method Apple added that got them in such trouble, and which Android phone makers have added over time hoping you wouldn't notice and also ask for cheap replacement batteries.