4 ms·

Its absolutely incredible how year after year, Apple convinces people to continually upgrade their devices, as well as drive new customers to there business. A

Its absolutely incredible how year after year, Apple convinces people to continually upgrade their devices, as well as drive new customers to there business. An important metric to note from there release however is that 66% of sales came from international markets.

verandaguy 11y ago
Definitely; if this whole thing goes under one day, it'll at least have been a tremendous learning experience for the industry.
tinkerrr 11y ago
That important metric actually understates their sales due to the strength of the US Dollar this last year. On a constant-currency basis, it is about 15% higher. Just goes to show the 'real' results are even more impressive.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >That important metric actually understates their sales due to the strength of the US Dollar this last year. Maybe sales were over-stated in the decade prior due to weakness in the US dollar? I don't understand the meaning of picking a favourable exchange rate to normalize the earnings. For all we know, it's high dollar from here to eternity.
sjwright 11y ago
And nobody upgrades Windows computers or Android phones? Where is the evidence that Apple product owners upgrade more frequently?
- wanda 11y ago
  I believe FreedomToCreate was expressing surprise not only at the frequency with which Apple customers upgrade their gear, but rather the fact that such expensive hardware should be upgraded so frequently at all when the advantages are incremental. The reason for this is that, while Apple gets incrementally better, it at least does not tend to get worse. Compare with Windows 10. Superficially, Apple tech is also a status symbol, especially among the young--but that is not to say that the cool kids do not buy Android phones, Kindles or Chromebooks. Less superficially, the target market of Apple is the luxury/privileged--and this segment of society does not consider advantages of upgrading and neither do they consider cost. It is the same segment of society (or at least significantly overlaps with the same segment) that will order avant-garde splats of "exotic modern art" food for exorbitant prices where others would consider frugality or nutritional benefit. It is the same market that all marketing targets: the clueless and impressionable. I am not saying Apple devices are bad, I am saying they are heavily marked up far beyond the value that OS X and its exclusive applications add, and ergo the majority of its buyers are sufficiently well-off that they can afford to have the most fashionable computer. There is very little fashionable about having something from the previous season, let alone 2012 (despite the fact that a MBP from this year will probably still be sufficient for a web developer in a typical situation). Of course, I am going to get lambasted if I do not also mention that OS X is (arguably) well-designed in terms of user interface. I say arguably because, personally, I do not see this glistening advantage--but I'm a developer, I want a command line and a modern web browser. What I do see is more effort put into the actual polish of the UI than Microsoft seems to invest in their OS. It's no different to Chrome vs Firefox. Chrome is building up quite an impressive market share, despite the fact that its peers (excluding IE, as always, because apparently implementing the flexible box model was too difficult) can do most of the same things that Chrome can do. In a similar vein, Chromium (FOSS Chrome) is readily available to use (yes, yes, dev builds, but they are remarkably stable and I've yet to experience an issue with a Chromium dev build) yet nobody uses it. While obviously discoverability is an issue (since Chromium does not advertise that it can be easily installed) I imagine that if you offered Apple hardware at a lower price without branding, it would sit in the branded Apple hardware's shadow. Especially given the angst already present among cool kids about phones which seem to imitate the iPhone's physical product design) Well, this has been thoroughly anecdotal and I don't usually like to do that, but hey ho. If it's of value for someone to read and expand upon or criticise, why not post it
  - jdminhbg 11y ago
    Apple has somewhere north of 40% market share in smartphones in the USA[0]. It's hardly a niche luxury market like "exotic modern art food." [0]: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Apples-iOS-eats-into-Androids-market-share-in-the-U.S._id69061 http://www.phonearena.com/news/Apples-iOS-eats-into-Androids...
    - wanda 11y ago
      I did not mean to imply that all Apple customers are luxury market. I have an iPhone and I only just scrape by. But I bought an iPhone 5 refurb rather than the iPhone 6--primarily because, despite having long fingers, I detest big phones.
    - petra 11y ago
      There's a marketing term called "affordable luxury". And yes it's a contradiction. But it does exist and guide marketers.
      - jdminhbg 11y ago
        Totally agree that Apple is selling affordable luxuries. Which is why I disagreed with this: > It is the same segment of society (or at least significantly overlaps with the same segment) that will order avant-garde splats of "exotic modern art" food for exorbitant prices Those are unaffordable luxuries.
  - tanker 11y ago
    I question your value definition. 1) Apple products work well together. 2) iOS doesn't always play well with others (I understand receiving texts on Android devices from Apple devices is annoying). 3) Apple as a brand has value. All of these may also contribute to a fourth consideration of resale value. Jeep is a good comparison. Jeep's vehicles are probably not much different than other car makers, but there is a huge and well established aftermarket parts business. Jeeps hold value well in the used market. I would be interested in the used value of Apple vs comparable Android products. I find a dumb phone meets my personal needs, so I have little interaction with either product. Edit: I agree that people in general upgrade their devices more often than they need to based on their use case. It would be interesting to know if Apple owners do so more often than Android owners.
duaneb 11y ago
Is it incredible? Do their competitors have systemic problems getting their customers to upgrade? I don't see that. If anything, I still see plenty of iPhone 4s and 5c models and content customers.
- billiam 11y ago
  Are you kidding? I think Apple has definitely proven it understands the upgrade cycle for products better than anyone--they perfectly the mid-cycle upgrade that the phone companies invented in the early 2000s (that's the S line), while doing what Motorola, Samsung, etc never could--consistently reduce hardware BOM by ~50% per generation. They nailed the product planning, they just missed the collapse of oil and the high dollar.
  - duaneb 11y ago
    You can call it perfect, but it doesn't mean it's so. What kind of numbers are you seeing on upgrades that "proves" they're having some kind of special activity here?
    - lostlogin 11y ago
      $74 billion convinced me.
      - duaneb 11y ago
        That's a revenue number. It does not indicate any type of characteristic about the behavior of the individual customers.
digi_owl 11y ago
Somehow Jobs was able to turn the brand into a fashion item, up there with certain watches etc, back during the iPod. Then again i can't help but wonder if he got help by Apple computers being a de-facto standard in media production. I seem to recall that the first time i heard about iPod was because some artist or actor was seen with some white wires dangling from his ears. And that was back when you needed a Firewire card and third party software to get it working on anything but a Mac. And as best i recall it was not in the tech section or some such.
- erikpukinskis 11y ago
  I don't understand why design-focus isn't enough of an explanation for Apple's success. Sell the most powerful product humanity has ever seen (the computer) and put human factors at the heart of the product process. That's it. No one else did that. Every other computer company allowed other motivations to trump human factors. These days it's standard practice... although, few people know how to tell a good designer from a bad one, so they hire bad ones who do crap work and the institution never really trusts them and project managers end up running the show, mostly by allowing powerful employees to put their pork barrel projects on the schedule. Steve Jobs could tell good designers from bad ones, he provided a wall of protection and power around them, and he fought like hell to keep the company solvent until the rest of the organization started to trust them. That's why they have devices people want to re-purchase year after year.
  - arrrg 11y ago
    I do think it’s fashion, but it’s fashion combined with technical depth and sophistication. Usually technology that’s just plain stylish (instead of, say, kitschy or flashy) tends to be technologically quite poor, especially when it comes to software, but also when it comes to component quality. Apple manages to provide a complete and round packet. Sure, some aspects are better or more pronounced than others, but it’s not very uneven.

verandaguy 11y ago

Definitely; if this whole thing goes under one day, it'll at least have been a tremendous learning experience for the industry.

tinkerrr 11y ago

That important metric actually understates their sales due to the strength of the US Dollar this last year. On a constant-currency basis, it is about 15% higher. Just goes to show the 'real' results are even more impressive.

forgetsusername 11y ago
>That important metric actually understates their sales due to the strength of the US Dollar this last year. Maybe sales were over-stated in the decade prior due to weakness in the US dollar? I don't understand the meaning of picking a favourable exchange rate to normalize the earnings. For all we know, it's high dollar from here to eternity.

sjwright 11y ago

And nobody upgrades Windows computers or Android phones? Where is the evidence that Apple product owners upgrade more frequently?

wanda 11y ago
I believe FreedomToCreate was expressing surprise not only at the frequency with which Apple customers upgrade their gear, but rather the fact that such expensive hardware should be upgraded so frequently at all when the advantages are incremental. The reason for this is that, while Apple gets incrementally better, it at least does not tend to get worse. Compare with Windows 10. Superficially, Apple tech is also a status symbol, especially among the young--but that is not to say that the cool kids do not buy Android phones, Kindles or Chromebooks. Less superficially, the target market of Apple is the luxury/privileged--and this segment of society does not consider advantages of upgrading and neither do they consider cost. It is the same segment of society (or at least significantly overlaps with the same segment) that will order avant-garde splats of "exotic modern art" food for exorbitant prices where others would consider frugality or nutritional benefit. It is the same market that all marketing targets: the clueless and impressionable. I am not saying Apple devices are bad, I am saying they are heavily marked up far beyond the value that OS X and its exclusive applications add, and ergo the majority of its buyers are sufficiently well-off that they can afford to have the most fashionable computer. There is very little fashionable about having something from the previous season, let alone 2012 (despite the fact that a MBP from this year will probably still be sufficient for a web developer in a typical situation). Of course, I am going to get lambasted if I do not also mention that OS X is (arguably) well-designed in terms of user interface. I say arguably because, personally, I do not see this glistening advantage--but I'm a developer, I want a command line and a modern web browser. What I do see is more effort put into the actual polish of the UI than Microsoft seems to invest in their OS. It's no different to Chrome vs Firefox. Chrome is building up quite an impressive market share, despite the fact that its peers (excluding IE, as always, because apparently implementing the flexible box model was too difficult) can do most of the same things that Chrome can do. In a similar vein, Chromium (FOSS Chrome) is readily available to use (yes, yes, dev builds, but they are remarkably stable and I've yet to experience an issue with a Chromium dev build) yet nobody uses it. While obviously discoverability is an issue (since Chromium does not advertise that it can be easily installed) I imagine that if you offered Apple hardware at a lower price without branding, it would sit in the branded Apple hardware's shadow. Especially given the angst already present among cool kids about phones which seem to imitate the iPhone's physical product design) Well, this has been thoroughly anecdotal and I don't usually like to do that, but hey ho. If it's of value for someone to read and expand upon or criticise, why not post it
- jdminhbg 11y ago
  Apple has somewhere north of 40% market share in smartphones in the USA[0]. It's hardly a niche luxury market like "exotic modern art food." [0]: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Apples-iOS-eats-into-Androids-market-share-in-the-U.S._id69061 http://www.phonearena.com/news/Apples-iOS-eats-into-Androids...
  - wanda 11y ago
    I did not mean to imply that all Apple customers are luxury market. I have an iPhone and I only just scrape by. But I bought an iPhone 5 refurb rather than the iPhone 6--primarily because, despite having long fingers, I detest big phones.
  - petra 11y ago
    There's a marketing term called "affordable luxury". And yes it's a contradiction. But it does exist and guide marketers.
    - jdminhbg 11y ago
      Totally agree that Apple is selling affordable luxuries. Which is why I disagreed with this: > It is the same segment of society (or at least significantly overlaps with the same segment) that will order avant-garde splats of "exotic modern art" food for exorbitant prices Those are unaffordable luxuries.
- tanker 11y ago
  I question your value definition. 1) Apple products work well together. 2) iOS doesn't always play well with others (I understand receiving texts on Android devices from Apple devices is annoying). 3) Apple as a brand has value. All of these may also contribute to a fourth consideration of resale value. Jeep is a good comparison. Jeep's vehicles are probably not much different than other car makers, but there is a huge and well established aftermarket parts business. Jeeps hold value well in the used market. I would be interested in the used value of Apple vs comparable Android products. I find a dumb phone meets my personal needs, so I have little interaction with either product. Edit: I agree that people in general upgrade their devices more often than they need to based on their use case. It would be interesting to know if Apple owners do so more often than Android owners.

duaneb 11y ago

Is it incredible? Do their competitors have systemic problems getting their customers to upgrade? I don't see that. If anything, I still see plenty of iPhone 4s and 5c models and content customers.

billiam 11y ago
Are you kidding? I think Apple has definitely proven it understands the upgrade cycle for products better than anyone--they perfectly the mid-cycle upgrade that the phone companies invented in the early 2000s (that's the S line), while doing what Motorola, Samsung, etc never could--consistently reduce hardware BOM by ~50% per generation. They nailed the product planning, they just missed the collapse of oil and the high dollar.
- duaneb 11y ago
  You can call it perfect, but it doesn't mean it's so. What kind of numbers are you seeing on upgrades that "proves" they're having some kind of special activity here?
  - lostlogin 11y ago
    $74 billion convinced me.
    - duaneb 11y ago
      That's a revenue number. It does not indicate any type of characteristic about the behavior of the individual customers.

digi_owl 11y ago

Somehow Jobs was able to turn the brand into a fashion item, up there with certain watches etc, back during the iPod. Then again i can't help but wonder if he got help by Apple computers being a de-facto standard in media production. I seem to recall that the first time i heard about iPod was because some artist or actor was seen with some white wires dangling from his ears. And that was back when you needed a Firewire card and third party software to get it working on anything but a Mac. And as best i recall it was not in the tech section or some such.

erikpukinskis 11y ago
I don't understand why design-focus isn't enough of an explanation for Apple's success. Sell the most powerful product humanity has ever seen (the computer) and put human factors at the heart of the product process. That's it. No one else did that. Every other computer company allowed other motivations to trump human factors. These days it's standard practice... although, few people know how to tell a good designer from a bad one, so they hire bad ones who do crap work and the institution never really trusts them and project managers end up running the show, mostly by allowing powerful employees to put their pork barrel projects on the schedule. Steve Jobs could tell good designers from bad ones, he provided a wall of protection and power around them, and he fought like hell to keep the company solvent until the rest of the organization started to trust them. That's why they have devices people want to re-purchase year after year.
- arrrg 11y ago
  I do think it’s fashion, but it’s fashion combined with technical depth and sophistication. Usually technology that’s just plain stylish (instead of, say, kitschy or flashy) tends to be technologically quite poor, especially when it comes to software, but also when it comes to component quality. Apple manages to provide a complete and round packet. Sure, some aspects are better or more pronounced than others, but it’s not very uneven.