11 ms·
Ask HN: Why is Apple still releasing 16 GB phones?
Is it really just cost of components? Especially when you can now record in 4k. It defies all of my current logic. Would love to hear some additional theories.
- emocin 11y agobusinesses might not want their employees putting 125gb of music or photos or games on the phones they provide.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- DarrenMills 11y agoIt may exist only to push the consumer to a higher price. 16GB is a low-friction pain point that pushes many people into to an option with more profitable margins for Apple.
- lessthunk 11y agoget users addicted; when it's too painful you buy a bigger more expensive phone.
- skorecky 11y agoIt's a pushed to get more users to rely on iCloud. This still sucks though because you can't store apps in the cloud and it nice to have music locally (though Apple Music seems to cache) when riding on the subway / dealing with AT&Ts poor connections.
- smacktoward 11y agoIt lets Apple run ads that say "iPhone 6S: starting at $649."
- coldtea 11y agoBecause people still buy them. It's that simple. For a parent buying for a smaller kid, a business/organization buying for its employees, or a senior citizen who just runs a few apps, it's ok. It's obviously not for people wanting to record videos in 4K (or record videos in general -- lots of older people only record a few minutes or so a year, some grandchild's birthday or such). If you do that a lot, you get a higher end model.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- aa10ll 11y agoMaybe also because they can sell space on their colo'd hardware at a big premium.
- coldtea 11y agoNot so sure about that. iCloud is negligible to their profits -- whereas people not being satisfied with their iPhones can have huge impact.
- tedmiston 11y agoI disagree. If entry level were 32 GB, many people would buy that. However, anyone who's owned an iPhone before knows that 16 GB is far too little to hold even a small collection of songs, photos, apps, etc. By removing the 32 GB model and making entry level 16 GB, they cause most of us to bump up to the 64 GB instead --> $$$.
- tobylane 11y agoI have what I'd call a considerable, varied and growing collection of apps, plus many albums and a full photostream on 16GB. I only run out of space when I have a lot of photos at the same time as a silently downloaded update. Both are easily solved within 10 minutes.
- allsystemsgo 11y agoObviously people still buy them, otherwise they wouldn't continue to sell them.
- Khaine 11y agoBecause the iPhone is sold worldwide, and this makes it more affordable for the middle class of India, China, and other developing nations
- erbdex 11y agoIndian here. The middle class sticks with Moto E/G here. The upper middle class goes with an iPhone 4S/5S and even Nexus and OnePlus One.
- trengrj 11y agoI just had a look at the storage on my iPhone and saw I had used 4.9 GB on a 64 GB phone. I'm sure that Apple has data showing that this type of usage makes up a decent percentage of users. Not sure why I use so little. I take photos but generally use streaming music services rather that have a large collection of mp3s. Also I find the screen too small to watch movies.
- gravypod 11y agoI agree. The average use case for a phone does not involve shooting a movie and such does not need 4TB space on it. It's ridiculous that people are complaining that apple makes a product that is too small for their use case.
- chrisBob 11y agoI am using 9GB on a 5s. 2 of those are pictures, and 2 of those are a single game. With bigger games and the fact that I might watch a movie on my iPad means that it often bumps against the 16GB limit, but it isn't as much of an issue on my phone.
- tedmiston 11y agoThat's pretty amazing to me. Don't you cache music offline in Spotify or Apple Music? Streaming over cellular is pretty intense data usage and it seems like most of us don't have unlimited plans anymore, at least not without throttling. I have a 32 GB which hovers around 1-2 GB available with me using 25 GB (assuming the size difference is OS and built-in apps). Around this point is when I start to notice apps getting killed from memory more aggressively and slightly more sluggish performance switching apps, etc.
- tankerdude 11y agoContextual pricing perhaps? Kind of akin to this: http://www.marketingwords.com/blog/psychology-pricing-products-services/ http://www.marketingwords.com/blog/psychology-pricing-produc... Snippet from the classic experiment: For instance, a small popcorn would be $3.50. A medium-sized bucket of popcorn would be $7.50 and a large would cost $8.00. The mindset here is that “for only 50 cents more” you can get a much larger portion of popcorn. The same is true for fountain drinks at gas stations. Small = $.99. Medium = $1.49. Large = $1.59. Which sells more? Almost always the large for “just 10 cents more.”
- tedmiston 11y agoAlso called framing - http://whywereason.com/2011/10/14/the-price-of-framing-anchoring/ http://whywereason.com/2011/10/14/the-price-of-framing-ancho...
- ratfacemcgee 11y agoopposite of the anchor price, i guess?
- CyberFonic 11y agoA lot of consumers have no idea how much storage is required per picture or per minute of video. So they just see the price tag and buy the cheapest to get admitted to the iClub. It happens all the time at parties. People try to take a photo, there is no room and they ask "What's wrong?". Their eyes glaze over when I try to explain how all those pix on their phone are using up the storage. Then they suggest deleting a couple SMS messages .... as if :-(
- rajacombinator 11y agoThere's a lot of people for whom 16GB is sufficient.
- kleer001 11y agoAnother reason: Because those chips are still cheap and being made. I'm sure if 8GB would work with iOs they'd sell those too. But then again I'm not a phone manufacturer, that's just an educated guess.
- ashwn 11y agoi think @tankerdude has it right...easy $100
- mod 11y agoI just bought an 8gb Android phone. It does have a microSD port, but I don't expect I'll need to use it. Maybe some people use phones differently than you.
- skygazer 11y agoIn recent years, Apple doubled iPhone storage levels while keeping prices the same: the middle tier 32gb became 64, and the high end 64gb tier became 128 -- however, the 16gb remained untouched. There is no longer a 32gb offering. I think this is telling. If Apple had doubled the 16gb to 32, then many of the prior middle tier purchasers would now be drawn to Apple's cheapest tier, and Apple would lose that revenue, $100 per unit. At the same time, those that feel stifled by the 16 have more incentive to upgrade to the 64, at the same price as the prior 32. Why is this still the case, years later? I think the issue is that 32gb remains the sweetspot for more than half of the potential customers, and if they offered it, their low end product will cannibalize their mid tier sales and cost them billions.