29 MEEELLION iPhone Xs flogged... only to be end-of-life'd by summer? Apple globally shipped 29 million units of the eye-wateringly expensive iPhone X in the two months after it was launched in late 2017, falling short of consensus estimates from analysts. Sales of the $999 handset – priced at £999 in Britain – were expected to reach 30 million, said Ben Stanton, analyst at Canalys, which …
Interestingly, the headline says SOLD, but the first sentence mentions SHIPPED.
Two very different things, given Apple's tendency to build hype by initially starving the supply chain to create fake initial demand (to boost sales) and flooding he supply chain to fake numbers for keep earnings reports looking healthy.
There is ALOT of unsold inventory, and production lines in the 3 contract manufacturers are already mothballed.
Credit where credit is due. No-one else could openly associate a smiling turd with a stratospherically expensive new toy (as they did) and turn in something approximating a sales success.
Every other marketing department on Earth would grossly overestimate the discernment and attention span of the target victims customers and recoil in horror at the obvious brand damage, but our friends in Cupertino know better. As with Burberry check caps, "divers" watches the size of sundials and Kardashian reality TV shows, they have a finger on the real pulse of society.
> So sad but so true. I feel a breakaway online republic coming on, one that rejects this idiocracy based version of society
You've given me a great idea for a TV show. Technocrat Island, or Nerd Tribe or Misanthrope Colony or whatnot. Not a show I would watch, well not unless it all goes Lord of Flies, but one that will make money. Pro tip to contestants: your survival more likely if you can enthuse others to the merits of not thumping you.
That's the trouble with Internet tribes and flame wars - not enough real sticks, real stones and real flames.
TBH sales of Samsung's S6 did show how much the market prefers the premium model with "something special". Samsung underestimated demand for the Edge version and had to adjust production accordingly.
It's early days for Apple yet but 30 million at around $ 600 profit per phone is worth having.
Not sure how to interpret the speculation that the X will be canned. It could be that everyone who wants, and can afford one, has one. But it could also be that they will squeeze the components back into a more standard format later in the year and it's really just the "notch" that gets the chop. OLED, wireless charging, waterproofing and everything else Apple copied from Samsung are here to stay.
Naive nonsense.
Really? I'll back Mr Clark on this one (and IHS and Techinsight tear down analysis do as well. Apple's gross profit margin if they sell an iPhone X for a grand is $630 a pop. Go look it up, its all public domain, and if there's any doubt, it would be that Apple can get the components and assembly even cheaper than the market analysts' estimate.
Sorry, it's absolutely true. And the more money they mug from brain-dead hipsters, the more spare cash they have to keep the press sweet and to fund all sorts of security expert "research" about Android. It's a perfect situation for apple to be in, and you can pretty much it all play out
Next year's 5.8" OLED model that follows the X won't be $999, I think it is more likely to be $899 or perhaps $849 (because they won't need to price it high to limit demand to match supply and won't have yield problems on the sensors driving up the cost) That means they'd have to cut too much off the price of the X to keep it around as "last year's model". Besides, they have SO many models now and are adding another one (a 6.2" LCD version as the cheaper option below the 5.8" OLED and 6.5" OLED) so keeping the X around is just too much.
"because they won't need to price it high to limit demand to match supply"
Sure, that's definitely why Apple priced it at a grand a phone. Because they're always so anxious to ensure that they don't create demand that they can't satisfy.
And as for the next one being $100 cheaper... not a chance in hell, Apple will continue to see if they can just keep increasing the price by $100 a year until it starts seriously hurting the bottom line, and then hold it there.
Sure, that's definitely why Apple priced it at a grand a phone. Because they're always so anxious to ensure that they don't create demand that they can't satisfy.
I wasn't suggesting they had altruistic motives, but if you KNOW you supply is going to be limited you have two choices to handle it. One, have waiting periods of months to get one. Two, set the price higher so demand reduced to match supply.
The second one is a problem for when the supply becomes less limited - then you sell fewer of them so you may or may not end up actually making more money that way. But almost all of those who were put off by the high price of the X either bought a cheaper iPhone or decided to wait until next year.
I think whether this year's X replacement is priced the same or not will depend on whether the higher price has proven more profitable. A consolidation is likely though, if not a complete flush of the product line supposing they port the X's form factor to an LCD handset for the new mid-tier, sweeping away the 6s, 7 and 8.
A full[-ish]-face SE-sized handset at the 'low' end would be a very appealing device for me. Maybe next year? My 6s is still fine until then.
They don't bother me. They do me no harm. And very occasionally there is the childish joy of telling someone "Yes it is a very nice [expensive Mac] but unfortunately the application you are trying to install won't work on it. You will have to buy Windows. Yes I know you bought the Mac because your friends told you Windows is inferior. That's just how it is."
What does bother me is the ones who try to persuade their elderly relatives that they need whatever is the most expensive current iPhone in order to make a few phone calls and send a few text messages. Literally just that. Frankly, I think Dorophone could make money with a flip phone with a simple ASCII keyboard which would meet their needs better.
Indeed, a non XL Pixel2 is also better in pretty much every regard, and half the price.
And for just over a quarter of the price of the Pixel 2, I've got an excellent Xiaomi device, with better battery life. In terms of specification they are embarrassingly close, with the main claim to fame of the Pixel being a better (but lower resolution) camera, and a higher res screen. Since I don't notice ANYTHING that makes me think "I wish that I'd spent more", I'm well pleased. Years ago, if you could, buying the premium handset was indeed the sensible choice. With the compression of capabilities over time, the lower cost handsets have made the performance gap far less.
Which leads me to the question: When did we become so rich that splunking even £500 on a phone for virtually no benefit over something far, far cheaper became sensible? Fair enough for cash millionaires. But for the rest of society, it implies people really don't know what else to spend £500-1,000 on. Or they put immense value on the "prestige" of Google's brand, or on having that latest shiney.
Don't forget £10 or more for 60 ml of beard oil.
Maybe the government could issue a £1bn contract to Crapita for mobile shaving units to patrol the streets, seizing anybody with a (facial) beard and forcibly giving them a good clean shave before throwing them into the gutter. And that'd catch religious fundamentalists, c**ts like Jeremy Corbyn, Richard Branson as well as hipsters. What's not to like?
Look at those, hipsters, Apple fanboys extraordinaire ...
Why does djstardust write that ? because they bought a phone for $999, forgetting that his own phone cost $750 ...
As for the vastly superior phone, well, I beg to differ ... it runs Android, 0wned. Way too expensive, for cheap Android.
£999...
I feel quite happy with my choice, my S4 finally gave up the ghost so I got a wileyfox swift 2 for £150 for my sim only cheap as chips contract and it runs CM which is what I was using on the S4, I even got the January security updates yesterday. A quick look round the old web and it looks like even when it stops being officially supported I'll still be able to get roms for it. It does everything I need and it even has fingerprint sensor which before I'd used one didn't realise how useful they are for quickly unlocking the phone. Why someone would spend an Apple amount of money on what is essentially future landfill is beyond my comprehension, even if I won the lottery I still wouldn't buy one. Each to their own I guess.
The iPhone XXXX, planned for release in 2047 (#) is expected to do well down under, because Australians won't give a XXXX for anything else.
(#) Unless it doesn't come out on the iPhone's fortieth anniversary, but that would never happen unless Apple did something inconsistent with their numbering, like releasing the iPhone 8 and 10/X at the same time and not bothering with a 9.
I remember when games for the ZX Spectrum were all £5.00, then came Ultimate, who in fairness to them, produced some of the most fantastic games the spectrum every saw, but, they upped the price to £10.00 instead of the customary £5.00. Ok, everybody thought, they deserve more because the games are so much better, but low and behold, once other games manufacturers cottoned onto the fact people were prepared to pay £10.00, they all followed suit, no matter how rubbish the game.
Forward 35 years and here we are with a £1,000 phone. I hope that others don't follow suit, but somehow I doubt it.
"So you waited until it came out on Firebird or Mastertronic..."
As far as I'm aware, the budget software (£1.99 / £2.99) market in the sense that most people know it didn't really exist circa 1982/83 when Ultimate rose to prominence.
Even though a lot of budget releases were reissues of more obscure games from the earliest days (c. 1984 on)- alongside a high proportion of original material- I don't think people during Ultimate's heyday (1982-85?) would have necessarily expected that their higher-quality games would have been later reissued at budget prices.
The "big quality, big name" reissues were- IIRC- more associated with the later 80s. (#) Ironically, it seems that US Gold's motivation for buying out the Ultimate name and catalogue in the mid 80s- which was later bought back by the owners- was purely so they could reissue the back catalogue at budget prices.
(#) When such reissues became increasingly dominant and (from what I've heard) made it harder for original material to compete with them. It's notable that original budget software was- IIRC- much rarer on the 16-bit formats (not to mention generally much more expensive), and that as the market switched over to them in the late 80s, releases for them were almost entirely reissues (presumably the higher development costs of original material that could compete with the reissues in quality terms would have been prohibitive, which is why- along with the higher prices- the true "budget" market essentially died with the 8-bit formats).
Meh... I'm a bit of a curmudgeon about cell phones. I don't do texting, Google, apps, etc. Just voice phone calls as needed. So my Samsung SGH-A847 is cheap enough, battery gets charged once a week or so and no headaches. On top of that, I'm not stuck paying nearly a grand for a cell phone.
It may not be what all the cool kids have, but it works for me and I'm not running around all day with a cell phone in my hand like too many other people I know.
Do I need to turn in my IT membership card and go hide in darkest part of the woods?
Icon: I think the phone is in my coat pocket... now where did I leave my coat?
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