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I think iPhone sales are slowing because the devices have become more durable and last longer. People aren't abandoning their iPhones, they're just using them f

I think iPhone sales are slowing because the devices have become more durable and last longer. People aren't abandoning their iPhones, they're just using them for 3 and 4 years instead of replacing hem every 18-24 months under carrier contracts. The iPhone 6 is still a very capable smartphone five years on, provided you've replaced the battery in the meantime. The same couldn't be said of the 3GS in 2013. And this is where services and wearables come in to pick up the slack, which is arguably more consumer friendly than building devices that barely last two years.

cronix 7y ago
Funny how that happened immediately after they got caught purposefully slowing down phones without telling people when all they had to do was replace a battery instead of buying a new phone to fix declining speed issues. Sales seem to have dried up pretty quickly after that because you could fix it for $50 and have a fast phone again instead of $1000 on a new one. Most people don't need a faster processor to view their Twitter.
- dawnerd 7y ago
  > Most people don't need a faster processor to view their Twitter. If twitter keeps “improving” their app you will. But seriously though, how is it that the twitter app regularly causes my devices to lock up?
  - cronix 7y ago
    No idea, I don't allow those apps (most) on my phone. The website works just fine for those rare times I actually use it, which is mostly clicking on links that lead back there. If I need a newer faster phone to view basic html (a list view of posts, with video...basic stuff here...) then I just won't use that noncritical service. I'll live. There is no need to use a lot of cpu for such a basic thing. It's a glorified website.
- basch 7y ago
  I dont think its this at all. What happened is the processors became fast enough. Each year the processors were "twice as fast" as the year before. Somewhere around the A10 there were diminishing returns, where being twice as fast wasnt useful anymore. Much like laptops, once they got fast enough, energy efficiency became the most important metric.
- babypuncher 7y ago
  This mischaracterization of the battery issue is nonsense. Phones finally got fast enough that people were using them until the batteries could no longer hold any meaningful charge, causing the OS to throttle the CPU so that users got more than 5 minutes of battery life. Anyone who brought their phone in to an Apple store was told all they needed was a new battery. That isn't "planned obsolescence". If you want real planned obsolescence, look at just about every Android phone that stops getting firmware updates after 18 months.
tyingq 7y ago
Well, and maybe they've saturated the "willing to pay a lot for a cell phone market". They may need an entry level phone to grab any additional market share. Which is dangerous because of potential to cut into higher end sales.
- criddell 7y ago
  The low end of the market isn't a very appealing place to be. I think they don't mind if Android takes that market.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    The floor price keeps going down though. Maybe they don't want a $125 phone, but perhaps they want a $250 (new, not refurb) phone.
    - wlesieutre 7y ago
      The recent drastic redesign also lowers the appeal of the older iPhone models. A $139 Nokia 2.2 looks like a better phone than the refurb iPhone 7 does, just because they designed it to imitate the iPhone X's curved corners and camera notch. Removable battery and headphone jacks aside, it's probably a worse phone than the iPhone 7 is. But it doesn't look like a worse phone. When Apple's cheaper used phones catch up to the modern phone design style, I think they'll be more competitive. But that's still years away, and who knows what new phones will look like then.
      - criddell 7y ago
        Apple dipped their toes into the lower end of the market with the 5C and the fact that they made it look drastically different suggests that Apple agrees with you.
        scarface74 7y ago
        The 5C was never a lower end phone. It was the typical year old phone sold for $100 less. They just put a less expensive case on it.
handedness 7y ago
> And this is where services and wearables come in to pick up the slack, which is arguably more consumer friendly than building devices that barely last two years. It's worth noting Apple's US battery replacement fees. Watch: $79 AirPods: $49 AirPods Case: $49 Not outrageous on the watch, but on the lower-end SKUs it could constitute a large percentage of the original purchase price, especially if they were purchased at even a common discount. $98 to refresh AirPods is significant. The case battery does tend to degrade a bit more slowly, but my experience is that they don't last all that much longer than the AirPods. A new wireless charging case is $79, while a standard replacement charging case is $69. Given that the above hardware has about a 2.5-3-year life on the batteries, it doesn't seem as consumer-friendly as it could.
- babypuncher 7y ago
  On those devices, battery replacement is impractical in part due to their design (how do you take apart a pair of AirPods to replace the tiny batteries inside?) The $29 battery replacement cost for iPhones seems very reasonable.
jayd16 7y ago
They last longer because innovation has slowed. My old Motorola Droid still works but I moved away from it because of missing features, not wear and tear. I can say this about almost every phone I've had.
- Brakenshire 7y ago
  Most non-iPhone smartphones don’t provide security updates for more than a few years. The hardware isn’t much use if the software is unsecured.
  - jayd16 7y ago
    I really do not think this is a concern that the general public has or is aware of. Never has anyone told me the main reason they're upgrading their phone is because their old one is not getting security updates.
austinhutch 7y ago
The iPhone 6s continues to be the best piece of hardware I've ever owned. I imagine folks with an SE feel similarly.
- 333c 7y ago
  Sure do!
- clairity 7y ago
  i'm on a 6s as well. every year i look at the new phones and i just can't justify paying so much for incremental improvements. faceID is nice but touchID is just fine. 2GB of memory is fine too. and while i don't use the headphone jack much any more, it's nice as a backup for when i forget the airpods. i may upgrade next year with the purported 5G rollout, but i'm not even sure that's worth it. LTE is fast enough and its coverage is mostly good enough too.
  - devxpy 7y ago
    When LTE came out in India, I noticed my service provider (Airtel) deliberately slowing down HSPA+. Plus, I am pretty confident that the speeds that I actually get didn't change by a huge factor when the transition happened. If anything they got slower because of congestion, due to the amazing price drop and crazy increase in user adoption.
- m463 7y ago
  I like my 8+ The X and beyond are nice, but I think the facial unlock is a pita and stopped my upgrade. I also ordered a purism phone...
- Kuraj 7y ago
  For the longest time I thought the iPhone SE was the best phone they've ever made. I might finally upgrade to a model that has NFC and a screen that doesn't stop working in the rain, though.
  - babypuncher 7y ago
jiveturkey 7y ago
> And this is where services [...] come in to pick up the slack I take it you mean subscriptions? If so, that's a mischaracterization. Subscriptions aren't "taking up the slack". They will soon become, if not already, an equal partner in Apple's revenue picture. You have to love that a big company like Apple can seamlessly shift their business model just a bit, with dramatic results. Many companies their size become protectionist, and then fail.

cronix 7y ago

Funny how that happened immediately after they got caught purposefully slowing down phones without telling people when all they had to do was replace a battery instead of buying a new phone to fix declining speed issues. Sales seem to have dried up pretty quickly after that because you could fix it for $50 and have a fast phone again instead of $1000 on a new one. Most people don't need a faster processor to view their Twitter.

dawnerd 7y ago
> Most people don't need a faster processor to view their Twitter. If twitter keeps “improving” their app you will. But seriously though, how is it that the twitter app regularly causes my devices to lock up?
- cronix 7y ago
  No idea, I don't allow those apps (most) on my phone. The website works just fine for those rare times I actually use it, which is mostly clicking on links that lead back there. If I need a newer faster phone to view basic html (a list view of posts, with video...basic stuff here...) then I just won't use that noncritical service. I'll live. There is no need to use a lot of cpu for such a basic thing. It's a glorified website.
basch 7y ago
I dont think its this at all. What happened is the processors became fast enough. Each year the processors were "twice as fast" as the year before. Somewhere around the A10 there were diminishing returns, where being twice as fast wasnt useful anymore. Much like laptops, once they got fast enough, energy efficiency became the most important metric.
babypuncher 7y ago
This mischaracterization of the battery issue is nonsense. Phones finally got fast enough that people were using them until the batteries could no longer hold any meaningful charge, causing the OS to throttle the CPU so that users got more than 5 minutes of battery life. Anyone who brought their phone in to an Apple store was told all they needed was a new battery. That isn't "planned obsolescence". If you want real planned obsolescence, look at just about every Android phone that stops getting firmware updates after 18 months.

tyingq 7y ago

Well, and maybe they've saturated the "willing to pay a lot for a cell phone market". They may need an entry level phone to grab any additional market share. Which is dangerous because of potential to cut into higher end sales.

criddell 7y ago
The low end of the market isn't a very appealing place to be. I think they don't mind if Android takes that market.
- tyingq 7y ago
  The floor price keeps going down though. Maybe they don't want a $125 phone, but perhaps they want a $250 (new, not refurb) phone.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    The recent drastic redesign also lowers the appeal of the older iPhone models. A $139 Nokia 2.2 looks like a better phone than the refurb iPhone 7 does, just because they designed it to imitate the iPhone X's curved corners and camera notch. Removable battery and headphone jacks aside, it's probably a worse phone than the iPhone 7 is. But it doesn't look like a worse phone. When Apple's cheaper used phones catch up to the modern phone design style, I think they'll be more competitive. But that's still years away, and who knows what new phones will look like then.
    - criddell 7y ago
      Apple dipped their toes into the lower end of the market with the 5C and the fact that they made it look drastically different suggests that Apple agrees with you.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        The 5C was never a lower end phone. It was the typical year old phone sold for $100 less. They just put a less expensive case on it.

handedness 7y ago

> And this is where services and wearables come in to pick up the slack, which is arguably more consumer friendly than building devices that barely last two years. It's worth noting Apple's US battery replacement fees. Watch: $79 AirPods: $49 AirPods Case: $49 Not outrageous on the watch, but on the lower-end SKUs it could constitute a large percentage of the original purchase price, especially if they were purchased at even a common discount. $98 to refresh AirPods is significant. The case battery does tend to degrade a bit more slowly, but my experience is that they don't last all that much longer than the AirPods. A new wireless charging case is $79, while a standard replacement charging case is $69. Given that the above hardware has about a 2.5-3-year life on the batteries, it doesn't seem as consumer-friendly as it could.

babypuncher 7y ago
On those devices, battery replacement is impractical in part due to their design (how do you take apart a pair of AirPods to replace the tiny batteries inside?) The $29 battery replacement cost for iPhones seems very reasonable.

jayd16 7y ago

They last longer because innovation has slowed. My old Motorola Droid still works but I moved away from it because of missing features, not wear and tear. I can say this about almost every phone I've had.

Brakenshire 7y ago
Most non-iPhone smartphones don’t provide security updates for more than a few years. The hardware isn’t much use if the software is unsecured.
- jayd16 7y ago
  I really do not think this is a concern that the general public has or is aware of. Never has anyone told me the main reason they're upgrading their phone is because their old one is not getting security updates.

austinhutch 7y ago

The iPhone 6s continues to be the best piece of hardware I've ever owned. I imagine folks with an SE feel similarly.

333c 7y ago
Sure do!
clairity 7y ago
i'm on a 6s as well. every year i look at the new phones and i just can't justify paying so much for incremental improvements. faceID is nice but touchID is just fine. 2GB of memory is fine too. and while i don't use the headphone jack much any more, it's nice as a backup for when i forget the airpods. i may upgrade next year with the purported 5G rollout, but i'm not even sure that's worth it. LTE is fast enough and its coverage is mostly good enough too.
- devxpy 7y ago
  When LTE came out in India, I noticed my service provider (Airtel) deliberately slowing down HSPA+. Plus, I am pretty confident that the speeds that I actually get didn't change by a huge factor when the transition happened. If anything they got slower because of congestion, due to the amazing price drop and crazy increase in user adoption.
m463 7y ago
I like my 8+ The X and beyond are nice, but I think the facial unlock is a pita and stopped my upgrade. I also ordered a purism phone...
Kuraj 7y ago
For the longest time I thought the iPhone SE was the best phone they've ever made. I might finally upgrade to a model that has NFC and a screen that doesn't stop working in the rain, though.
- babypuncher 7y ago

jiveturkey 7y ago

> And this is where services [...] come in to pick up the slack I take it you mean subscriptions? If so, that's a mischaracterization. Subscriptions aren't "taking up the slack". They will soon become, if not already, an equal partner in Apple's revenue picture. You have to love that a big company like Apple can seamlessly shift their business model just a bit, with dramatic results. Many companies their size become protectionist, and then fail.