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Comment by crb002 | Hacker News Reader

So Apple prices themselves out of the market and now they are shocked the market reacted with lower sales.

You mean, analysts who typically claim sales are down based on hints and rumors are once again claiming sales are down based on hints and rumors.

No one is claiming sales are falling outright, but that they are slowing...and that is definitely the case. There is a reason why Apple has an incredibly low F P/E. Wall Street loves growth, cash cows usually get less love. That's why Microsoft was flat for ages despite having solid profits but no real growth arm. Then Azure happened and suddenly it's a growth stock. Apple will be just fine, obviously, I actually think the market's overreaction has more to do with overall jitters of the Trump trade war.

Isn't it possible by supporting their own devices for so long they've slowed sales for themselves? If Androids get three years of updates and Apple's get six, and there are fewer and fewer emerging markets you're obviously going to have slow down at some point.

If anything, it might point to increased satisfaction with Apple products which retain their value and work securely for longer.

iOS 12 made iPhone 5's faster than they were with iOS 11 didn't it?

That to me is worth a premium but it also means I probably won't upgrade my 7 for a while.

Apple will have to continue pushing their watches, Apple TVs, and air pods and maybe new products to perpetually have people buying more and more of their products if their products consistently last a long time.

Last time we got actual numbers from Apple (only a few weeks ago btw) the iPhone was selling just fine even at the record setting price points.

Apple just stopped releasing unit shipped data only revenue. Revenue grew but we don't know how many phones were sold.

Apple announced that they were going to stop releasing numbers this coming quarter. Apple announced numbers during the quarter that just passed.

I'm not sure the largest company by market cap has priced itself out of the market just yet.

Blackberry’s highest stock price was one year after the iPhone was introduced. Market Cap is not a leading indicator.

In fairness to RIM:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/266240/global-revenue-of...

Their revenue continued to grow in the early iPhone days. Blackberry was still the mobile for business users until iOS (and Android) caught up on application and service support that those users wanted/needed.

I don't think we've seen (yet) a situation where people will, en masse, depart the iOS platform. RIM failed to recognize (until too late) the desire for an iPhone-style device amongst business users, and ended up losing out to both Android and iOS devices. Android devices aren't offering anything (with regard to hardware and software capabilities) that is substantially different than what iOS devices offer. The primary differentiator today is the pricing, which it seems many Apple customers don't care about (enough to jump ship).

RIM failed to recognize (until too late) the desire for an iPhone-style device amongst business users, and ended up losing out to both Android and iOS devices.

After listening to the book Losing the Signal, I'm starting to think they rushed into the iPhone clone market too fast at the insistence of Verizon. I actually think they would have better off getting their ducks in a row and getting their software strategy correct before challenging Apple. It really seems like they were rushed badly.

Aren’t the new iPhones approximately the same price as the premium android phones?

Edit: Note to self, don’t ask questions here. I had thought the top of the line Samsungs were close. Good points below about cost per supported year.

Not really, there is a fairly significant drop when you compare top end Android phones to top end iPhones.

The Pixel 3 and S9 are about $300 cheaper. That's a big chunk.

How long will they be supported?

What is the cost per supported year?

This.

If history is any guide and seeing the iPhone 5s is going into its 5th year of being supported. Someone with an this years phone should be getting updates until 2023.

Don't know about Samsung, but Google has been quite good about supporting their phones over longer time periods and has been making specific changes to Android because they can't count on the carriers to do the upgrades.

The Nexus 6 is a 2014 phone and is upgradeable to Nougat/7.1.1--which was basically top end until just this year.

The original Pixel is a 2013 phone and actually has Android 9 support.

The original Pixel isn't a 2013 phone. It's a 2016 phone. That's a pretty big difference from 2013.

Try selling them both 3 years from now. You’ll get that chunk back.

Unlocked Pixel 3: $799-899 (64GB-128GB)

Unlocked Pixel 3XL: $899-999 (64GB-128GB)

Unlocked iPhone Xs: $999-1349 (64GB-512GB)

Unlocked iPhone Xs Max: $1099-1449 (64GB-512GB)

I don't know if Google's Pixel phones are really premium, but by the price I'm assuming so. It seems Apple is adding about $200 over Google's price for the similar size and storage points.

Depth sensor? Other meaningful specs? Plthe difference between $800 and $1000 is abstract when you're financing or renting month to month

No doubt there are more spec differences between the two. I don't know Android hardware well enough to find a proper Android-to-Apples comparison, so I went with a current flagship from Google and the two specs that (I suspect) most users care about: size and storage.

Yes, and when you sell them in 2 years time the iPhone will be worth $300 more than the Pixel.

In my market, the Google Pixel 2 XL is literally half the price of the iPhone X

As others have said the difference is a few hundred dollars.

The other thing is that the premimum phones offer less than they used to over medium priced phones and that is where Android phones are much cheaper.

Apple devices hold their value better, but still the price differences between very good mid-range phones and iPhones are pretty big.

iPhone XS: $999

iPhone XS Max: $1,099

Pixel 3: $799

Pixel 3 XL: $899

So the new iPhones are now more expensive than the new premium Android phones. Historically, yes it seems like iPhones cost as much as the best-of-the-breed Android phones.

A big part of the issue is that there is no iPhone XS with 128gb storage, and no iPhone XR with 4x4 MIMO. If those were the real prices then that would be one thing, but they're purposely making their base models all but unusable.

When they still sold 16 GB phones sure, but 64 GB is perfectly fine for most users, especially if you use music and photo services in the cloud. As for 4x4 MIMO, I saw benchmarks on a real-world network, and the differences were pretty much negligible (under 10%)

The base models are nowhere near "unusable", they're actually better than they have ever been for Apple.

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