Bloomberg:
Apple Inc.’s sales of iPads, iPhones and other devices fell 20 percent at Target Corp. stores during the second quarter, confirming Apple’s struggles with a global slowdown in smartphone demand and waning interest in its out-of-date gadgets.
Hmmm. Out-of-date gadgets?
Target CEO Brian Cornell said the weakness in Apple’s sales at the retailer was “across the product suite,” and that the company is putting plans in place to better capitalize on the new devices when they hit the shelves.
“Our guests come to us looking for those products,” Cornell said on a conference call to discuss earnings. “They’re looking for the newness and the innovation. We’re putting together plans with Apple and our merchandising teams to make sure we’re ready to take advantage of that in the back half of the year.”
Hard to tell where this is Target shifting blame for poor sales and actual evidence of an Apple-specific slump. But the out-of-date gadgets stings, at least in part because of the aging MacBook Pro and Mac Pro lineup. But are those gadgets? I certainly wouldn’t call the iPhone or iPad out-of-date.
Target doesn’t even sell the laptops or desktops. All they carry are the items that are updated every year.
target fans don’t give a shit about Intel chip series, so give the meme a rest.
Target has fans? They’re a shoddy also-ran.
Me thinks they are speaking of out of date technology in the iPhones mostly. Let’s be honest, Apple releases reliable phones and thought out feature sets for it’s technology without a question but that’s usually after those technologies are available on other phones and platforms for many years. NFC, Display Resolution, Screen size, RAM, storage, Baseband modems (for both WiFi and LTE), wireless charging, etc… are all technological advances that Apple was many years behind or bringing to their devices or in some cases still haven’t brought to their devices. With the except of their SoC which is industry leading year after year – other technologies in their ‘gadgets’ are out of date.
“We’re putting together plans with Apple and our merchandising teams to make sure we’re ready to take advantage of that in the back half of the year.”
What does that even mean? There’s no way to be ready to take advantage except to make sure the receiving docks are open when the shipments drop.
But are those gadgets? I certainly wouldn’t call the iPhone or iPad out-of-date.
It’s been nearly a year for the iPhone!
New random-Android phones came out yesterday!
If “up to date” means “biggest feature checklist”, yes.
(NFC? Come off it. Nobody’s ever used that in the field in the history of mankind*.
Nobody gives a flying copulation about the baseband modem either – just how the phone performs, which oddly seems to be “perfectly well”.
(Thus, despite zdnet’s clickbait title, the difference between The Winner Samsung (well, one of them, the Note 3 – the actual phones are slower than Apple’s) and Slow, Lame Apple is … 1.5Mbps. Out of 137. 1%.
Nobody. Has. Ever. Cared. About. That.
Seriously, how can you even mention it as if baseband modem “out of date” is a thing?)
Maybe I should have explained a bit better – I took for granted my audience was nerdier than it was. There are baseband modems responsible for both WiFi and Cellular. Although Apple stores are insanely popular the majority of iPhones are sold through carrier outlets. When a customer, be it a nerd, or someones mom comes into the store to get advice on which phone to buy and the salesperson explains that “this phone (iPhone) doesn’t have LTE so the download speeds won’t be as fast as this other phone (Android) so wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the fastest (insert carrier here) speeds we have to offer” that absolutely affects sales. In aggregate millions upon millions.
That was some years ago though. However the year Apple introduced LTE, a newer revision of LTE had already come out and the iPhone had the older revision (I believe it took 2 additional iPhones before the faster LTE modem was included), so again that conversation was had in stores with customers who sure didn’t care anything about a ‘baseband’ but were told what they translated in their heads to “this phone is faster than that phone because this phone doesn’t support the newer technology”.
This of course is in a conversation with the same said customer where the salesperson goes on to explain, “this phone (Android) has a higher resolution screen so the images will be sharper, and this phone (Android) also has a higher megapixel camera so photos of your family and children will be better”… you get where I’m going with this. Now I’m not making an actual value judgement on which devices display looks better or camera is better – that’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is at the point of sale, carrier employee (and Target employees as well) interactions with customers many times goes something like that. That affects sales. A fact which has shown itself in the ever increasing Android Marketshare (86%+ as over this past week) world wide and the declining iPhone marketshare.
Again, I’m not making any value judgement of whether marketshare matters or not and I’m not saying that technology being ‘up to date’ is the only factor in declining world wide sales -obviously price is a factor especially in emerging markets etc… – I am just pointing out that from a retail employee to potential customer perspective I believe what I’ve laid out above is what those comments in the article at least loosely referring to.