iPhone X is dead as consumers turn their backs on pricey smartphones

[Syntaxvgm]

I think journalists now are making the mistake of comparing iPhone sales now to older iPhones. They just don't sell like they used to, and this applies to all phones. Smartphone innovation is slow now, and consumers are lethargic. Combine that with apple in general making not duds but not their best, and this is pretty normal. They'll cut back production and still  make a killing before the next one. People just done freak out over them anymore. Whens the last time you got a new phone and it was so much better than your old one that you couldn't imaging going back and living with it?

[wasab]

2 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

Their profit margins must be tiny at $400. 

They have huge investors keeping them afloat. Also, margin is good enough to be profitable around $500-$650. Don’t see why some companies are so greedy to charge $1000+

[Kamjam21xx]

The nicer phones use to cost 200-300$ usually things decline in price over time. 

 

Like say a computer you can do filing on.

 

[79wjd]

Just now, wasab said:

They have huge investors keeping them afloat. Also, margin is good enough to be profitable around $500-$650. Don’t see why some companies are so greedy to charge $1000+

If margins are so good at $500-$650, then why would Essential be so greedy and charge $700....

[Syntaxvgm]

2 minutes ago, wasab said:

They have huge investors keeping them afloat. Also, margin is good enough to be profitable around $500-$650. Don’t see why some companies are so greedy to charge $1000+

 

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

If margins are so good at $500-$650, then why would Essential be so greedy and charge $700....

I really think apple is one of the only ones that manages to get crazy margins these days for electronics in general, might be wrong. 

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, Syntaxvgm said:

 

I really think apple is one of the only ones that manages to get crazy margins these days for electronics in general, might be wrong. 

Apple, Samsung, Dell, HP....basically any premium product from a major brand has pretty hefty margins,

[BuckGup]

10 minutes ago, wasab said:

Been using an oled iPhone X for months and staring at an oled panel constantly does get boring. LCD has its attractions. 

Lol what

[Syntaxvgm]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

Apple, Samsung, Dell, HP....basically any premium product from a major brand has pretty hefty margins,

I'm pretty sure those are all in single digits except for apple

 

[BuckGup]

29 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

The screen on the X is larger on the diagonal at 5.8" vs. 5.5", but in terms of overall screen area, it's marginally smaller (5-10% iirc). 

 

EDIT: The 8 Plus has an area of 82.96cm² while the X has an area of 83.08cm² (minus the notch). So about the same size, but still worse battery life on the X most likely due to the OLED screen being less efficient with the color theme of iOS.

Also doesn't the X have a higher res screen

[wasab]

Just now, Syntaxvgm said:

 

I really think apple is one of the only ones that manages to get crazy margins these days for electronics in general, might be wrong. 

Apple is the worst offender but plenty others are also going wild with the pricing. What they are doing is essentially making $1000+ phones mainstream. If Apple does it, Samsung does, everyone then follows steps and start trying to outdo The industry leader in the crazy pricing.

[79wjd]

7 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Also doesn't the X have a higher res screen

That's true, it is about 30% higher, I didn't think about that. Regardless, displaymate's power consumption metrics would indicate that the OLED display is less efficient. 

http://www.displaymate.com/iPhone7_ShootOut_1.htm

http://www.displaymate.com/iPhoneX_ShootOut_1a.htm

[wasab]

12 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

If margins are so good at $500-$650, then why would Essential be so greedy and charge $700....

They aren’t oneplus but they did return to the light side by slashing prices so who cares?

[79wjd]

Just now, wasab said:

They aren’t oneplus but they did return to the light side by slashing prices so who cares?

One Plus has also steadily been raising prices....

 

And you should care, for the same reason that you care about every other company. They will raise prices just the same as soon as they're on a stronger footing.

[Syntaxvgm]

1 minute ago, wasab said:

Apple is the worst offender but plenty others are also going wild with the pricing. What they are doing is essentially making $1000+ phones mainstream. If Apple does it, Samsung does, everyone then follows steps and start trying to outdo The industry leader in the crazy pricing.

im basing this off of general electronics, less off of phones because I don't pay much attention there. 

[wasab]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

One Plus has also steadily been raising prices....

 

And you should care, for the same reason that you care about every other company. They will raise prices just the same as soon as they're on a stronger footing.

Not as high as how Samsung and Apple are jacking up their prices. As long as they fixed their flagship at 50% of apples and samsung’s flagship, it is a very price friendly phone.

[79wjd]

4 minutes ago, wasab said:

Not as high as how Samsung and Apple are jacking up their prices. As long as they fixed their flagship at 50% of apples and samsung’s flagship, it is a very price friendly phone.

That's irrelevant. Your entire argument is that Apple and Samsung are terrible for charging too much and making too much money. Essential tried to do the exact same thing and failed miserably because they couldn't sell their product. Alternatively, One Plus took the more viable approach and started low to gain market share and has been increasing their price with every generation in order to increase their margins (and rumors put the OP6 as being the most expensive One Plus device yet, which would make perfect sense).

 

For some reason you seem to think that One Plus and Essential are selling phones for their health and aren't trying to maximize their margins. 

[wasab]

16 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Lol what

I am saying lcd is better than oled. Crazy but that is my preference.

[wasab]

6 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

That's irrelevant. Your entire argument is that Apple and Samsung are terrible for charging too much and making too much money. Essential tried to do the exact same thing and failed miserably because they couldn't sell their product. Alternatively, One Plus took the more viable approach and started low to gain market share and has been increasing their price with every generation in order to increase their margins (and rumors put the OP6 as being the most expensive One Plus device yet, which would make perfect sense).

 

For some reason you seem to think that One Plus and Essential are selling phones for their health and aren't trying to maximize their margins. 

One plus is selling below the max consumers are willing to pay. If they wish to maximize their profit, they would be selling the phones higher so they do not face shortage and loss of profits. They do not follow supply and demand so how do you justify that? 

https://open.lib.umn.edu/principleseconomics/chapter/3-3-demand-supply-and-equilibrium/

Supply they can’t control if they mispredict but price they certainly can and yet didn’t leading to them running out of stocks before the intended date.

Edited April 23, 2018 by wasab
Spelling

[BuckGup]

18 minutes ago, wasab said:

I am saying lcd is better than oled. Crazy but that is my preference.

That is crazy

[captain_to_fire]

52 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

I'm still on my G3 0 complaints. Like I could get a new phone, but there's 0 reason for me to so far.

People usually buy these things on plans, but even then the prices lately are enough to scare off people from getting a minor upgrade.

I used to have the LG G3 and I hated the following: 

• muted color gamut 
• Snapdragon 801 is struggling to power a 1440p display thus causing thermal issues 
• Boot loop (though can be fixed by a battery replacement) 

[Syntaxvgm]

4 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

I used to have the LG G3 and I hated the following: 

• muted color gamut 
• Snapdragon 801 is struggling to power a 1440p display thus causing thermal issues 
• Boot loop (though can be fixed by a battery replacement) 

I never had #2 but I don't play games on it. 

Muted color gamut yah, but it's not my primary screen I don't care. Text and web sure looks fine on it. It's not a multimedia device to me and  a lot of people. Aside from music, anything more I prefer a desktop or laptop not a tiny ass phone with a touchscreen. Much better experience. 

Never had a boot loop, but I did have to rip it apart and replace the glued in headphone jack once. It's not actually attached to the board, it's glued to the case and touches the board, so that always breaks on these. 

[79wjd]

23 minutes ago, wasab said:

One plus is selling below the max consumers are willing to pay. If they wish to maximize their profit, they would be selling the phones higher so they do not face shortage and loss of profits. They do not follow supply and demand so how do you justify that? 

https://open.lib.umn.edu/principleseconomics/chapter/3-3-demand-supply-and-equilibrium/

Supply they can’t control if they mispredict but price they certainly can and yet didn’t leading to them running out of stocks before the intended date.

Except that's not quite right. A company doesn't know what the maximum consumers are willing to pay in advance (Essential guessed wrong at $700 and suffered because of it), so they have to take an educated guess -- if they guess too high, then they have to drop prices, which leads to two problems. First, they lose the initial launch window when the hype is strong (which is very bad for sales), and secondly, consumers lose faith in the product when they see that there was a large price drop shortly after release (or they believe the price will continue to drop, both are also very bad for sales). If they guess too low, then they just make less money than they otherwise could have, but still end up in a far better position than guessing too high.

 

If One Plus wasn't trying to maximize their profits then they wouldn't have been continually raising prices with every generation to see how high people will go.

[wasab]

4 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Except that's not quite right. A company doesn't know what the maximum consumers are willing to pay in advance (Essential guessed wrong at $700 and suffered because of it), so they have to take an educated guess -- if they guess too high, then they have to drop prices, which leads to two problems. First, they lose the initial launch window when the hype is high (which is very bad for sales), and secondly, consumers lose faith in the product when they see that there was a large price drop shortly after release. If they guess too low, then they just make less money than they otherwise could have. 

 

If One Plus wasn't trying to maximize their profits then they wouldn't have been continually raising prices with every generation seeing how much people are willing to pay. 

Why couldn’t they? They sell online so they easily do an algorithm that predicts demand trend and jack up prices to ensure supply is constant before the intended date. This is what amazon does.

 

I had had taken business calculus so I can confidently tell you that you can very much predict consumer demand using math. 

 

http://www2.gcc.edu/dept/math/faculty/BancroftED/buscalc/chapter2/section2-10.php

[Syntaxvgm]

4 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Except that's not quite right. A company doesn't know what the maximum consumers are willing to pay in advance (Essential guessed wrong at $700 and suffered because of it), so they have to take an educated guess -- if they guess too high, then they have to drop prices, which leads to two problems. First, they lose the initial launch window when the hype is strong (which is very bad for sales), and secondly, consumers lose faith in the product when they see that there was a large price drop shortly after release (or they believe the price will continue to drop, both are also very bad for sales). If they guess too low, then they just make less money than they otherwise could have, but still end up in a far better position than guessing too high.

 

If One Plus wasn't trying to maximize their profits then they wouldn't have been continually raising prices with every generation to see how high people will go.

 

They have plenty of data for that, I guarantee. And if they were somehow incapable of getting this kind of info in 2018, I guess a good old fashion set of focus groups or surveys could give insight. 

 

[79wjd]

4 minutes ago, wasab said:

Why couldn’t they? They sell online so they easily do an alogritm that predicts demand trend and jack up prices to ensure supply is constant before the intended date. This is what amazon does.

 

I had had taken business calculus so I can confidently tell you that you can very much predict consumer demand using math. 

 

http://www2.gcc.edu/dept/math/faculty/BancroftED/buscalc/chapter2/section2-10.php

There's a difference between Amazon, or any retailer, raising the price of an item to account for demand and a manufacturer themselves doing it. There's a reason why manufacturers don't generally raise the price of their products.

 

2 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

 

They have plenty of data for that, I guarantee. And if they were somehow incapable of getting this kind of info in 2018, I guess a good old fashion set of focus groups or surveys could give insight. 

Except that information isn't always right. If it was, then Apple wouldn't have mis-predicted sales figures for the X. OP would have had more OP5T stock. Essential wouldn't have priced their phone at $700. They can only make an educated guess, but it's not always right and it's better to err on the side of caution.