Too Many People Buying iPhones Other Than the 5 | Hacker News Reader

Too Many People Buying iPhones Other Than the 5

daringfireball.net

9 pointsshawndumas8 comments

Yet if it was more accurately framed as $2000 for an iPhone 4 with 2 years of service or $2200 for an iPhone 5 with 2 years of service, she probably would never have picked the iPhone 4. She might have picked the iPhone 5 or she might have picked a dumb phone that didn't require a data plan.

Yep, great point, it cannot possibly hurt Apple to have new customers coming into the ecosystem. After all they are going to be buying apps from the app store where Apple takes a 30% cut. The device is only the beginning. They are probably also likely to buy other Apple products - like MacBooks. This was Jobs' strategy when he moved advertising dollars to the iPod. He knew it would move more Macs (although in the early days iPods required a Mac).

If this shows anything, it's that Apple is feeling the pressure to for faster planed obsolescence. People don't go running after Samsung Galaxy S2 released around the same time, because for a long time Galaxy was stuck with an out of date Android version, while the iPhone ran the latest iOS as soon as it was released and will probably run the next one.

Devices that last long, can't get todays' short term investors happy.

I disagree with this. I would buy a new iPhone, but I wouldn't buy a new iPhone 5. I truly can't see much innovation between the 5 and the 4S, except for a bigger screen and slightly faster, whoopee doo.

If you are going to sell over-priced luxury goods, then you need to make sure that you don't out-compete YOURSELF.

Leaving aside innovation, I think it'd be reasonable to add LTE and a 20% weight loss to that list.

Well they aren't, that was the point of the article.

Some people, such as yourself, are willing to pay the exact same monthly price but not the $100 difference for the iPhone 5. Now instead of buying a $99 Android or some other phone you are opting for a $99 iPhone 4S, which just happens to have been released ~18 months ago.

Unless your point was that if there were no 4S you would have bought a 5, I can't see how this is disagreeing.

And marketing is why Apple succeeds - don't forget that.

Anyone read the daringfireball post? Seem not.

The POINT of his posting was to call out the moronic pundits for never being satisfied. At first criticizing Apple for not having a lower-priced iPhone and then in the same breath criticizing consumers who purchase the older iPhones because they are lower-priced.

The stupid decisions of consumers to purchase lower-priced phones considering how many years the cost of the phone will be amortized (at least in the prevalent US cellular phone market) had absolutely nothing to do with the article - however true that is.

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