Comment by johnthedebs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnthedebs | Hacker News Reader

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Even if the iPhone 4S would've been a worse phone than iPhone 4, they would've still sold at least a million units in first weekend. I think everyone knows that.

No, I don't think everyone knows that. If we learned anything from the past few Apple product launches, it's that customers aren't shy about complaining even if they aren't completely sure what they're complaining about.

But this sales boost will confirm to Apple that it's ok for them to just release the same phone for 2 years with some spec upgrades in the 2nd year.

It is okay. The economics behind producing this many millions of a devices doesn't allow them to change the design every single year without jacking up the price. And for what?

A "tick tock" schedule, like the one Intel has adopted, makes tons of sense for Apple too. You just can't completely rethink a product design every year once it's matured.

But that will be bad for customers. You don't see the other manufacturers keeping the same phone for 2 years. Apple is making billions in profits per quarter, and you're saying it would be bad for them to make it more often than 2 years? Then why not 3 years to save even more money?

And if you don't think they needed to change the design of the phone this time, just take a look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=e...

No wonder nobody wanted to "copy" its design and build. It's so weak, even some plastic phones are more solid than it.

> But that will be bad for customers. You don't see the other manufacturers keeping the same phone for 2 years.

Similarly, you don't see other manufacturers producing phones that they intend to still thoroughly support in a couple years time, which is why there is so much fragmentation in the Android ecosystem.

I think this is a key thing in Apple's market strategy across the board - you're not just buying hardware that will be out of date in 6 months time, you're purchasing a utility which will be more or less current for a couple years to come (like what we've seen in Macs).

I think its a smart move. It builds trust with the user base.

> You don't see the other manufacturers keeping the same phone for 2 years.

See the Motorola Droid 2 and 3, and the HTC Wildfire S and Desire S. And Apple's own 3GS. Essentially the same physical design as their predecessors, but faster. Actually, Samsung is perhaps the only major phone manufacturer who _doesn't_ do this; most of their phones do change reasonably dramatically on every revision.

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