Fewer than 10% of Americans are buying $1k smartphones, report says | Hacker News Reader

Fewer than 10% of Americans are buying $1k smartphones, report says

arstechnica.com

13 pointspaulpauper17 comments

The article cites 5G as some decision making parameter, but I don't believe this to be the case. People with slow networks (likely from urban construction density and high subscribers/cell-tower, or being in remote areas) won't see any meaningful difference, and those with fast access will have no impact either, as 4G is pretty darn fast if pushed to it's limit.

The MAIN takeaway here is simple - phone prices have crept up from $600-ish in 2013 to $1000-ish in 2019 without a commensurate increase in value to the end-user. To the extant that Apple has had to indulge in planned obsolescence [1] speaks volumes to stagnation of actual value delivered to the user.

This is just price gouging from [Apple, Google, Samsung] and the customers are right in sending them the signal of "don't care". I've personally set the max price/budget allocation to my phone at $600/two-years, and have been able to buy fabulous devices with high DXO-mark cameras, and great Antutu-speed benchmarks without breaking the bank. You should too.

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42615378

Since you mentioned Samsung, check out their A-series.

They seems to be pretty affordable.

And crappy. You are much better off buying last years galaxy x (or the year before that) than this years A series.

Actually, they are not. There are some really cheap ones in the series but the ones around 300-400 have been praised by most reviewers.

(I don't work Samsung, don't even have a Samsung myself).

It's not super clear from the article, but it sounds like they're talking about the outright purchase of an unlocked smartphone. Which, based on their past reports is only 15% of the market. [0] The headline is somewhat misleading when the vast majority of people are in fact buying the $1K smartphones, just subsidized through their mobile bill over several years.

[0] https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/20...

I really hate this trend. How did we, as a society, get to the point where financing a phone is reasonable? Why do we need to be "eligible" for an upgrade, and why do we let mobile carriers get away with this?

I wish the US was more like the rest of the world where you buy your phone separately from your mobile service.

This staggered price jump into luxuary goods land that Apple has been leading seems really weird to me. And not very sustainable.

I wonder how a Steve Jobs-led Apple might have managed this issue (of Apple being asked to increase their revenue by some relative large factor each year).

Steve would not be opposed to the idea. the iPhone has always been pricier than competitors, as are macs in general compared to PCs.

He launched the Macbook Air gen2. It was arguably the world's best laptop for a few years, at a very low cost (was it $899 or $999 at the base config cost?). This was around 2010-2012 or so.

College kids were using the exact same SKU as highly-paid developers or execs. I loved that. During these years, you literally couldn't buy a better compact laptop just by paying more.

Also: the low cost allowed us to treat them with less reverence. I went through 2-3 of them over 5 years or so. Nowadays I really hate feeling like like I need to protect that MBP as jewel.

A $1k hit never really felt that bad. A $3k hit feels bad.

That is not really true. The iPhone was launched at a lower price (and basically killed) than what passed for smart phones of the time. Likewise, the iPad was priced very aggressively.

Sure, you can buy cheaper smartphones now. But the iPhone is still priced in line with the similarly featured flagship phones from competitors.

Apple’s margin is still high in all its categories. I suspect this is what drives their pricing.

To think the original Macs flew off the college bookstore shelves at $2K THIRTY-FIVE years ago...

This model cannot last?

Some said it was Tim Cook, and other Executives like Scott Forstall trying to tell Steve Jobs to lower the selling because not everyone could afford it.

On the other hand Steve did acknowledge in various interviews that Apple had to make profits to sustain its R&D and innovation as well as Cash options if big chances were to come.

Steve never had the Apple right now where they have too much cash and not sure what to do with it. To date Apple had already spend $400B in buy back. And they still has $100B Net Cash on hand, with all of its business segment extremely profitable. I wonder if Steve would say we might want to lower our margin a little, or AppleCare+ for free.

Instead Tim Cook decided AppleTV + will be the moat and bait to keep people within the iPhone Ecosystem. Which I dont have much faith on.

These 4-5 separate statements seem really disconnected. Or perhaps I'm just not following you.

Could you please attempt to explain a bit more, so that we can connect the statements?

Smart phones have become so integral to life for most people that I can see many deciding its worth spending a lot.

I’m not even sure I would describe it as a luxury good, $40 per month over two years is less than a daily coffee habit.

327M * .10 * $1k ~= $33B

Quite the disaster... if only I’d dumped my APPL stock years ago? I would bet that Apple isn’t expecting 1 year turnovers on the iPhone11.

Not even a price point in my mind since I keep Apple products for 3-7 years. Would buy it tomorrow if I didnt have a free i8.

I had no idea they even came at that price range.

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