Iphone Killer

Not an iPhone killer (particularly with Apple’s hardware integration), could hurt AAPL px pretty hard by introducing price competition and stealing marginal volume. That being said, I currently have a flip phone for a total line cost of $20.

Interesting story about pricing and quality perception. My Dad had a side venture that sold leather motorcycle apparel (long story) in the late 90’s and early 00’s when Harley’s were all the rage. He priced at or below competition and sales were sluggish. The following summer, they more than doubled pricing and couldn’t keep gear on the shelves. Lacking market transparency, pricing is a major signal for most consumers. Partly because they don’t realize it, partly because they don’t want to believe they’re being f*cked as hard as they are by retailers so price must somehow be reflective of cost.

I bought the first iPhone when it was released. It really was a flawless product, particularly given the horrendous competition at the time. It was not necessarily bulky vs other phones. I compared the specs vs the razr I had at the time and it was only marginally larger with1.3X the surface area (4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46) vs (3.86 x 2.09 x 0.55) while having a screen that was 1.6x larger (3.5 vs 2.2 inch). Plus the razr v3’s mic sucked and all phones dropped calls back then.

This.

^ This double.

It has always been a problem that tech people do not think like normal people, and so they should not be in change of designing products for mass market.

Which is why you need normal-people testers, if the tester says it is wrong, DO NOT ship the product until it is right, according to the testers. In tech, really very few companies do that. Apple gets it. I was privy to inside info and know that iPhone1 was tested like no product in the history of products. The extended team walked around with one in their pocket for months using it all day (with a big fat NDA saying don’t let the public see you pull it out). They thought of everything.

Even now that AAPL has shown the way, most tech companies still ship beta-garbage, or things that are not aligned with how normal people use tech.

If apple gets it how come year after year they continue to release products that have less of what people want and more to rip their customers off? Lightening port, dropping headphone jacks. Its honestly laughable how anyone puts up with that crap. You can literally see the company do something to screw you, you watch it happen, and still buy? People are dumb. I personally enjoy the justifications they always give for the changes because for some reason it is wrong to state the obvious, that they want to screw you and take more money

Two reasons 1) post Steve Jobs, Apple is moving closer to the rest of the industry and 2) the lightning port and lack of headphone port will actually be superior over time once people get over the adjustment.

There are significant corporate DNA impediments to Google making an iPhone killer. Think of AAPL as a high end consumer goods company, not a tech one. If Microsoft had made the iPod it would look like this:

What BS already said above, the pull to normality, becoming like the other idiots post Jobs. It’s really amazing a company of their size was ever able to be different, and stay different for this long.

Regarding your complaints though, NOBODY CARES. Why? Because they feel they are getting what they paid for and more, they are not pissed, as seen by the fact they will pay those margins, and keep coming back. Apple is one of the few companies that does not blatantly screw customers, or does so on trivial things we are able to forgive. The industry goes over the top, screwing customers for every penny, people hate those companies, and switch to Apple.

It’s all relative, they don’t screw you too hard, or maybe they do, but it feels pretty good.

buy a Samsung Gear s2

Southwest Airlines had an emergency landing when a Samsung phone caught fire. I just don’t see something like that happen to an Iphone. I know this thread isn’t Samsung vs Apple, but the Iphone is so reliable that it isn’t getting replaced for a while, specially by this new google phone.

Apple did have fire-catching iPods about 10 years ago. Or maybe they were MacBooks or iBooks or something…

It is known.

Well, I liked the Pebble Round watch, but I decided I wanted a nicer and larger screen, and I didn’t like dealing with the buttons all the time.

The Pebble works better with my iPhone, but the Gear s2 is a better all around watch and activity monitor. Plus the rotating bezel control is a very natural way to interact with the phone without blocking the screen.

to assume consumer behaviour is going to change when disposable income rises is quite an assumption. so there is a perfect correlation between income and luxury smartphone sales? globally? that’s like me assuming google will eventually kill the iphone because as the nerd population grows so will the demand for nerd phones. smartphones are tools. tools can’t be luxury. tools are differentiated by function. people buy samsung because it pretty much does the same thing as an iphone and it is cheaper and thus the more sensible choice. why spend an extra few hundred on a few differentiating factors that have no utility to you? i wouldn’t. apparently most people agree with me. if apple can’t continuously offer novel functionality, it will lose its crown in the U.S. and its sales elsewhere will decline. this is why apple trades at such a seemingly reasonable valuation. they are one or two phone cycles away from losing their brand value.

I am not able to understand, because of your lack of punctuation.

Anyhow, I just talk to Koreans, they tell me they would rather have iPhone, but it’s too expensive there, so they get Samsung Note whatever. Same with India, China, etc. iPhones are luxury goods, Samsung is “low class”, unless you live in Philippines, then it’s “luxury”. Asia cares about status, you don’t get the market.