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Looks to me there’s plenty of competition. Apple just consistently wins. Consumers are willing to pay more per device and it flows through to profit. The others

Looks to me there’s plenty of competition. Apple just consistently wins. Consumers are willing to pay more per device and it flows through to profit. The others are competing on price and their margins reflect it.

gbrown 5y ago
Let me be clear, I mean technological and software competition. A duopoly between Android and Apple isn't it. For comparison, see the dekstop/laptop market, where there are many totally usable open source software alternatives to Windows/OSX.
johnchristopher 5y ago
I was talking with a MediaMarkt employee last week, we were talking smartphones and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insance. Yet people buy them in bulk. The brand is that strong. Apparently people also rush to replace their old models every year or two. Anyway, it just popped into my mind that I dreamt about buying a phone last night and the shop's owner just found a box with 60 iphones 13 that a customer finally didn't buy. But he had opened each box and the cardboard was ripped for each box so it was a massive loss for him. Funny coincidence.
- xoa 5y ago
  >and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insane. I'm honestly dumbstruck that people like you are dumbstruck. It's not very hard, and whether you your self use powerful handheld computers/cameras much it's objectively obvious others do a lot. Just do the normal ROI calc. Apple makes a feature for this called "ScreenTime". How many hours a day is the average iPhone user on their phone? A quick google search indicates over two hours. So that's over 700 hours per year, with a life time of at least two years on average. Do the math. What is so shocking about spending <$1/hour on something so heavily used and important? What price privacy/security focus and long term upgrades? Subtract too the resale value. What is surprising here?
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    > Do the math. What is so shocking about spending <$1/hour on something so heavily used and important? What price privacy/security focus and long term upgrades? Subtract too the resale value. What is surprising here? What's surprising is that for the vast majority the same can be done for <20ç/hour.
    - EveYoung 5y ago
      Yes, but researching these alternatives takes time and energy. Personally, I rather spent a £1-2k more on my tech gadgets per year than leaving the Apple ecosystem, which works well for me.
      - johnchristopher 5y ago
        Yes, I am also all for paying a bit more if it comes with the guarantee that it's less problem/questioning/time wasted researching or supporting the thing down the line.
    - marcellus23 5y ago
      Not really, unless you look at these devices like someone who thinks all cars are equal because they're all capable of taking you from A to B. If you're spending that much time with a device, you would probably prefer the experience to be _nice_, not shoddy.
      - johnchristopher 5y ago
        I am someone who has owned iphones before and still think they are overpriced for what they are. To be fair, the reality distortion field rarely works on me.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    I will grant that a small fraction of iPhone owners do a careful analysis similar to yours. And good for them. But just look at Apple ads to see what their real market is. Their ads don't argue that they're a good value. Apple established themselves as a luxury good that indicates wealth and social status. Their ads look like other ads for wealthy people. The reason Apple doesn't make a cheap phone is the same reason Porche doesn't make a cheap car. They could, but it would drop total profit as the luxury premium evaporates. The funny thing is, I've heard people make the exact same argument people are making here but for Louis Vuitton bags. It's something they use every day! They're so well made that they last a long time! They have great resale value! And all of those things are true, but people who spend $100 on a purse are still going to give side-eye to people who spend $1000 or $10,000, and I think that's fine. In my view status goods are a plague upon humanity.
- criddell 5y ago
  > Apparently people also rush to replace their old models every year or two. The resale prices on used Apple hardware is pretty good. When you factor that in, an iPhone may very well be less expensive than a competing Android device.
- handrous 5y ago
  > I was talking with a MediaMarkt employee last week, we were talking smartphones and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insance. They start at $400, right? Only really, really budget Android phones come in much under that. > Yet people buy them in bulk. The brand is that strong. Apparently people also rush to replace their old models every year or two. I have encountered three major species of iPhone owner: 1) Breaks a screen every couple of years, just replaces the phone when it happens. 2) Upgrades every year or two but leverages iPhones having a much better used market than Android to recover half or more of the original price via resale or trade-in, so they only pay full price for the first phone. (some of these now simply lease their phones, for convenience) 3) Holds on to each phone 4+ years, since the phones receive updates for so long. Pays full price every time, but goes a long time between upgrades.
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    > > I was talking with a MediaMarkt employee last week, we were talking smartphones and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insance. > They start at $400, right? Only really, really budget Android phones come in much under that. More like 489€. I don't know what's apple most sold devices for this year though. I have an old not-budget phone (z5c) from 6 years ago that is still going strong. Stuck on android 7.1, bought used for 250€ 4 years ago. I am still living in a world where a 200/250 phone should be okay, things might have changed. But we were talking about the whole offer, not the least expensive phone.
    - rjzzleep 5y ago
      Might wanna take a look at the following. I had an z3c that had a better supported android version from xda than a more recent xz2c because of their camera DRM and kernel bugs. Sony dev community has mostly dried up ... https://forum.xda-developers.com/f/xperia-z5-compact-android-development.4576/ https://forum.xda-developers.com/f/xperia-z5-compact-android...
      - johnchristopher 5y ago
mohanmcgeek 5y ago
There isn't. Only first time smartphone buyers have a choice.. you'll lose all your appstore purchases when you switch and having repurchase everything is going to dissuade anyone from switching. Even for the first time buyers, if all their friends are on iMessage, they practically have to buy an iPhone.
- zepto 5y ago
  How many App Store purchases matter? I’ve bought hundreds of apps over the years, but really don’t care about them. Nobody uses a lot of paid apps, and a lot of them have moved to subscriptions anyway.
- thefounder 5y ago
  Why would you need iMessages? I don't find it more useful than old school sms messaging. If you want secure messaging perhaps whatsup or signal are better options anyway.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    It's much, much faster than sms. Many of my friends refuse to get whatsapp let alone signal.
    - conductr 5y ago
      I to refuse to use other messaging apps but I find it hard to blame apple for creating a messaging app that people love/like enough to refuse using competing messaging apps. That's not lack of competition or lock in. That's just user preference, I prefer to keep it all in the same place. I don't need the extra feature of speed. Texting is async to me so speed it never noticeable. So I don't really care if you SMS me or iMessage me.
  - acdha 5y ago
    It's more reliable and faster than SMS, removes the size limits, far more secure, and supports a lot of modern features (non-terrible media quality, received/read notifications, threading, app embeds, etc.) Signal tries to offer that but isn't as polished. The Facebook services like WhatsApp are good and cross-platform but that involves trusting Facebook heavily.
acdha 5y ago
How many consumers are even paying more? iPhones start pretty cheap — not as low as the cheapest Android phones but they're starting with much better hardware and are supported considerably longer so this starts to feel more like Sam Vimes' boots[1] where someone buying cheap Android phones spends more than an iPhone SE over the service life. Flagship Android phones cost the same, often even more, than an iPhone despite the lower performance and still have a shorter service life. What I think it's really showing is that the Android economic model creates different incentives: Apple gets money when you buy the phone, apps, purchases in apps, and things like music or movies through their services. They certainly like it if you buy a new phone every year but all of those different groups share a common leader who wants to keep you as an Apple customer. When you buy an Android phone, the CPU manufacturer won't see another dime until you buy a new one. A vendor like Samsung may or may not depending on whether they have some other service you use or get kickbacks from the carriers. Google likely sees ongoing revenue but they don't care about the hardware as long as it doesn't make you switch to iOS. Each of those parties adds overhead which Apple doesn't have and they will make decisions which are rational for their business but perhaps not your satisfaction. 1. https://samvimesbootstheory.com/ https://samvimesbootstheory.com/
- CJefferson 5y ago
  When you say "not as low", the cheapest iPhone I can find looks like the SE, at 389 pounds. I can find multiple Android phones for 50 pounds -- that's nearly an eigth of the price. I don't deny the SE is a better phone than a 50 pound phone, but it's also in an entirely different bracket -- I wouldn't give a 10 year old a nearly 400 pound iPhone, I'd give them a 50 pound Android, for example.
  - reayn 5y ago
    While I get your argument, Apple probably just doesn't give a shit about competing in the ultra cheap phone market, they've found their "niche" (for lack of a better term) and will probably stay the way they are for the foreseeable future. Also, nowadays, most people (the vast majority of which don't think the same way as people on HN do) see a $400 phone as a compelling budget option[0], maybe even "low-end" if you'd go so far as to say that. 0. from personal experience with the iPhone SE2, it's a genuinely amazing phone for the price (sporting the same processor as the iphone 11 pro!) and suffers only in the battery department. Touch ID is also a great selling point for it.

gbrown 5y ago

Let me be clear, I mean technological and software competition. A duopoly between Android and Apple isn't it. For comparison, see the dekstop/laptop market, where there are many totally usable open source software alternatives to Windows/OSX.

johnchristopher 5y ago

I was talking with a MediaMarkt employee last week, we were talking smartphones and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insance. Yet people buy them in bulk. The brand is that strong. Apparently people also rush to replace their old models every year or two. Anyway, it just popped into my mind that I dreamt about buying a phone last night and the shop's owner just found a box with 60 iphones 13 that a customer finally didn't buy. But he had opened each box and the cardboard was ripped for each box so it was a massive loss for him. Funny coincidence.

xoa 5y ago
>and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insane. I'm honestly dumbstruck that people like you are dumbstruck. It's not very hard, and whether you your self use powerful handheld computers/cameras much it's objectively obvious others do a lot. Just do the normal ROI calc. Apple makes a feature for this called "ScreenTime". How many hours a day is the average iPhone user on their phone? A quick google search indicates over two hours. So that's over 700 hours per year, with a life time of at least two years on average. Do the math. What is so shocking about spending <$1/hour on something so heavily used and important? What price privacy/security focus and long term upgrades? Subtract too the resale value. What is surprising here?
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  > Do the math. What is so shocking about spending <$1/hour on something so heavily used and important? What price privacy/security focus and long term upgrades? Subtract too the resale value. What is surprising here? What's surprising is that for the vast majority the same can be done for <20ç/hour.
  - EveYoung 5y ago
    Yes, but researching these alternatives takes time and energy. Personally, I rather spent a £1-2k more on my tech gadgets per year than leaving the Apple ecosystem, which works well for me.
    - johnchristopher 5y ago
      Yes, I am also all for paying a bit more if it comes with the guarantee that it's less problem/questioning/time wasted researching or supporting the thing down the line.
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    Not really, unless you look at these devices like someone who thinks all cars are equal because they're all capable of taking you from A to B. If you're spending that much time with a device, you would probably prefer the experience to be _nice_, not shoddy.
    - johnchristopher 5y ago
      I am someone who has owned iphones before and still think they are overpriced for what they are. To be fair, the reality distortion field rarely works on me.
- wpietri 5y ago
  I will grant that a small fraction of iPhone owners do a careful analysis similar to yours. And good for them. But just look at Apple ads to see what their real market is. Their ads don't argue that they're a good value. Apple established themselves as a luxury good that indicates wealth and social status. Their ads look like other ads for wealthy people. The reason Apple doesn't make a cheap phone is the same reason Porche doesn't make a cheap car. They could, but it would drop total profit as the luxury premium evaporates. The funny thing is, I've heard people make the exact same argument people are making here but for Louis Vuitton bags. It's something they use every day! They're so well made that they last a long time! They have great resale value! And all of those things are true, but people who spend $100 on a purse are still going to give side-eye to people who spend $1000 or $10,000, and I think that's fine. In my view status goods are a plague upon humanity.
criddell 5y ago
> Apparently people also rush to replace their old models every year or two. The resale prices on used Apple hardware is pretty good. When you factor that in, an iPhone may very well be less expensive than a competing Android device.
handrous 5y ago
> I was talking with a MediaMarkt employee last week, we were talking smartphones and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insance. They start at $400, right? Only really, really budget Android phones come in much under that. > Yet people buy them in bulk. The brand is that strong. Apparently people also rush to replace their old models every year or two. I have encountered three major species of iPhone owner: 1) Breaks a screen every couple of years, just replaces the phone when it happens. 2) Upgrades every year or two but leverages iPhones having a much better used market than Android to recover half or more of the original price via resale or trade-in, so they only pay full price for the first phone. (some of these now simply lease their phones, for convenience) 3) Holds on to each phone 4+ years, since the phones receive updates for so long. Pays full price every time, but goes a long time between upgrades.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  > > I was talking with a MediaMarkt employee last week, we were talking smartphones and we both were dumbstruck about iphone prices. We agree it's good hardware/products but the price is insance. > They start at $400, right? Only really, really budget Android phones come in much under that. More like 489€. I don't know what's apple most sold devices for this year though. I have an old not-budget phone (z5c) from 6 years ago that is still going strong. Stuck on android 7.1, bought used for 250€ 4 years ago. I am still living in a world where a 200/250 phone should be okay, things might have changed. But we were talking about the whole offer, not the least expensive phone.
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    Might wanna take a look at the following. I had an z3c that had a better supported android version from xda than a more recent xz2c because of their camera DRM and kernel bugs. Sony dev community has mostly dried up ... https://forum.xda-developers.com/f/xperia-z5-compact-android-development.4576/ https://forum.xda-developers.com/f/xperia-z5-compact-android...
    - johnchristopher 5y ago

mohanmcgeek 5y ago

There isn't. Only first time smartphone buyers have a choice.. you'll lose all your appstore purchases when you switch and having repurchase everything is going to dissuade anyone from switching. Even for the first time buyers, if all their friends are on iMessage, they practically have to buy an iPhone.

zepto 5y ago
How many App Store purchases matter? I’ve bought hundreds of apps over the years, but really don’t care about them. Nobody uses a lot of paid apps, and a lot of them have moved to subscriptions anyway.
thefounder 5y ago
Why would you need iMessages? I don't find it more useful than old school sms messaging. If you want secure messaging perhaps whatsup or signal are better options anyway.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  It's much, much faster than sms. Many of my friends refuse to get whatsapp let alone signal.
  - conductr 5y ago
    I to refuse to use other messaging apps but I find it hard to blame apple for creating a messaging app that people love/like enough to refuse using competing messaging apps. That's not lack of competition or lock in. That's just user preference, I prefer to keep it all in the same place. I don't need the extra feature of speed. Texting is async to me so speed it never noticeable. So I don't really care if you SMS me or iMessage me.
- acdha 5y ago
  It's more reliable and faster than SMS, removes the size limits, far more secure, and supports a lot of modern features (non-terrible media quality, received/read notifications, threading, app embeds, etc.) Signal tries to offer that but isn't as polished. The Facebook services like WhatsApp are good and cross-platform but that involves trusting Facebook heavily.

acdha 5y ago

How many consumers are even paying more? iPhones start pretty cheap — not as low as the cheapest Android phones but they're starting with much better hardware and are supported considerably longer so this starts to feel more like Sam Vimes' boots[1] where someone buying cheap Android phones spends more than an iPhone SE over the service life. Flagship Android phones cost the same, often even more, than an iPhone despite the lower performance and still have a shorter service life. What I think it's really showing is that the Android economic model creates different incentives: Apple gets money when you buy the phone, apps, purchases in apps, and things like music or movies through their services. They certainly like it if you buy a new phone every year but all of those different groups share a common leader who wants to keep you as an Apple customer. When you buy an Android phone, the CPU manufacturer won't see another dime until you buy a new one. A vendor like Samsung may or may not depending on whether they have some other service you use or get kickbacks from the carriers. Google likely sees ongoing revenue but they don't care about the hardware as long as it doesn't make you switch to iOS. Each of those parties adds overhead which Apple doesn't have and they will make decisions which are rational for their business but perhaps not your satisfaction. 1. https://samvimesbootstheory.com/ https://samvimesbootstheory.com/

CJefferson 5y ago
When you say "not as low", the cheapest iPhone I can find looks like the SE, at 389 pounds. I can find multiple Android phones for 50 pounds -- that's nearly an eigth of the price. I don't deny the SE is a better phone than a 50 pound phone, but it's also in an entirely different bracket -- I wouldn't give a 10 year old a nearly 400 pound iPhone, I'd give them a 50 pound Android, for example.
- reayn 5y ago
  While I get your argument, Apple probably just doesn't give a shit about competing in the ultra cheap phone market, they've found their "niche" (for lack of a better term) and will probably stay the way they are for the foreseeable future. Also, nowadays, most people (the vast majority of which don't think the same way as people on HN do) see a $400 phone as a compelling budget option[0], maybe even "low-end" if you'd go so far as to say that. 0. from personal experience with the iPhone SE2, it's a genuinely amazing phone for the price (sporting the same processor as the iphone 11 pro!) and suffers only in the battery department. Touch ID is also a great selling point for it.