iPhone

Some terrific shots here. My favorite is the one with Sir Jony and Tim, checking out the new iPhone XR colors.

Seriously. Jump to the Apple Store and try to buy an iPhone. Any model. There’s a nice little “Be right back” message with an animated rainbow Apple. Interesting pattern.

Tripp Mickle, Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. is preparing to supersize its iPhone lineup, aiming to drive profit in its biggest business despite stagnant unit sales while also fueling growth for apps and services that are more appealing to users with bigger screens.

And:

At a time when people are buying fewer new phones, bigger size brings two advantages. It helps Apple buoy prices and profit margins because it can sell larger phones at a greater markup than it pays suppliers for the larger screens. And it encourages people to use their phones more, helping momentum of Apple’s services business, which includes app-store sales and subscriptions to video services like Netflix and HBO.

And:

Users with smartphone screens 6 inches or larger, like Apple plans to launch this year, typically use twice as many apps as those with 5.5-inch screens, such as those on the largest versions of the iPhone 6 or 7, said Kantar Worldpanel, a market research firm. Users of the larger devices also are 62% more likely to play games, and twice as likely to watch video daily as people with smaller screens.

Interesting article. Apple is getting smarter and smarter at fine-tuning devices to align with and drive revenue growth. This is all, in part, a strategy aligned with Apple’s coming entry into the Netflix-dominated video market.

There are spoilers in the article about tomorrow’s Apple event, so jump in if you are interested, avoid if you don’t even want a whiff of what’s coming.

Fascinating read. Apple’s branding path here is a puzzle.

iPhone 8, followed by iPhone X. OK, I get that. iPhone X is a new chapter. No more home button, no more Touch ID. New screen technology, new gestures.

So does the word Plus have any value in this new wave? Does the letter “s”, as in iPhone 6s, have any value?

Looking forward to Wednesday’s event.

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

A tech trade-in site says that today’s trade-in value is still 68% of the original sales price even a week before this year’s models are revealed, in strong contrast to one of Samsung’s flagship phones.

With the latest report suggesting that this year’s iPhone X successor, expected to be called the XS or Xs, could start from $800, that could represent an opportunity for a very cheap upgrade to the new model if you have a spare phone you could use to span the gap.

A new iPhone X starts at $999. 68% of that is $679.32. Which, if true that the base price of an iPhone XS is $799, would give you an upgrade price of $119.68.

Interesting. Especially when you consider that Apple offers a max (according to their web site) trade-in value of $290 for your existing phone.

How running a beta of iOS 12 got one Reddit user a free replacement for their damaged iPhone X.

Apple:

Apple has determined that a very small percentage of iPhone 8 devices contain logic boards with a manufacturing defect. Affected devices may experience unexpected restarts, a frozen screen, or won’t turn on. Apple will repair eligible devices, free of charge.

Affected units were sold between September 2017 and March 2018 in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Macau, New Zealand, and the U.S.

If you’ve got an iPhone 8 and you are experiencing these sorts of issues, follow the link and enter your iPhone serial number to see if your device qualifies for the program.

Lots of interesting nuggets in this survey. It’s a quick read, a single page. A few highlights:

19% of Android users surveyed indicated they plan on switching to an iPhone in the next year, compared to 12% last year.

The numbers were relatively small, so this might simply be a sampling issue. But if that number proves accurate, that’s a pretty big swing.

I’d be interested in a similar survey showing percentage of iPhone users who plan on switching to Android.

Another interesting point: The percentage of iPhone users who intend to upgrade to a new iPhone was 23% this time last year, and increased to a whopping 48% in the most recent survey. Part of that might be the perceived maturity of the iPhone X and Face ID (i.e., the kinks have been worked out), adding to a natural response to the waves of marketing.

It’s a bit of race to see if the auction hits its reserve or if Apple will throw a spanner in the works and try to have the auction taken down.

Here’s a link to the auction. As I write this, the current bid is $12,400.

Rob Griffiths compares a pair of (nearly) identical photos, taken four years apart, one with a pretty good pocket camera and one with, arguably, one of the best smartphone cameras on the market. To be fair, the pocket camera was a 2011 model, so the pictures might as well have been taken six years apart.

The results were interesting, both to show how far our smartphone cameras have come, but also for the comparison of file size, ISO, f-stop and shutter speed.

[Via Michael Tsai]

Shira Ovide, Bloomberg:

Like Apple’s 2017 iPhone editions, there will be three current year models but with even clearer product and pricing segmentation: good, better and best.

Here’s the thing, though: Apple has never done well selling the “good” phones in its lineup. That has hardly mattered because the more entry-level models effectively serve another duty: They push people to the more expensive versions that Apple increasingly relies on for its sales growth.

This article does a great job explaining Apple’s motivation in steering people to the top of the line models. As shareholders would rightfully expect, it’s all to maximize revenue.

Check out the first chart in the article, which shows Apple’s average revenue from each iPhone sold, on a yearly basis. Back in 2014, that number was $603. In only 3 years, that number skyrocketed to $758. Apple is good at this.

Think about the marketing you’ve seen over the last few years. Almost all of it is dedicated to pushing the top of the line iPhone X. When was the last time you saw a commercial for any other model, let alone the diminutive, in both price and form, iPhone SE.

Fire up Apple’s web site. There’s a gorgeous image of the iPhone X. Of course it makes sense that Apple would focus on the latest and greatest, but there’s also the flip side lesson, few people come to Apple for a budget phone:

This fits with a pattern of Apple’s relatively low-end iPhones not setting the world on fire. Remember the iPhone SE released in 2016? Apple said at the time that some people wanted a relatively smaller smartphone when most phones were getting supersized. It could have been the iPhone for the masses, but the $399 iPhone SE 2 has been relegated to a niche in Apple’s product lineup. The 2013 iPhone 5c was considered a budget alternative at $100 less than the $650 flagship model of the time. It is the Voldemort of iPhones. No one speaks of it.

“The Voldemort of iPhones”. Heh. I like it.

Another one of those interesting, readable articles with an unfortunate headline.

If you can get past the “Apple’s greatest flaws” sensationalism, this is actually pretty interesting.

Katharine Schwab, FastCompany:

It’s been a decade since the British designer Imran Chaudhri first imagined a user interface that would introduce millions of people to the smartphone. Chaudhri joined Apple in 1995, soon rising to become the design director of the company’s human interfaces group–where he was one member of the six-person team that designed the iPhone.

Credentials established.

Very early on, when we first started building prototypes of the phone, a couple of us were lucky enough to take them home… By using the phone and living with the phone, I had friends all over the world who were hitting me up all the time and the phone was pinging and the light was going on, so I realized for us to coexist with this phone, we needed to have something to act as a gatekeeper. Very early on, I designed what ultimately became Do Not Disturb.

And:

Inside, getting people to understand that [distraction] was going to be an issue was difficult. Steve [Jobs] understood it…internally though, I think there was always a struggle as to how much control do we want people to have over their devices. When I and a few other people were advocating for more control, that level of control was actually pushed back by marketing. We would hear things like, ‘you can’t do that because then the device will become uncool.’

And:

You might install about 10 applications on an afternoon and say, ‘yeah, you can use my camera, you can use my location, you can send me notifications.’ Later on down the road, you find out Facebook’s been selling your data. Later on down the road, you realize that you’ve developed a sleep disorder because these things are blinking every night and you actually don’t really care about them until the morning.

These are just snippets, just a taste of what I found to be a truly fascinating interview.

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

The new plans include 100GB storage for $1.99 a month, 200GB for $2.99 a month, and 2TB for $9.99 a month (down from $19.99). The free 15GB for non-paying users remains. There’s also a new family option for divvying up a single storage plan amongst up to five members.

And Apple:

Apple’s iCloud monthly storage plans aren’t so different: they start with 5GB free storage for non-paying users, then offer 50GB for $0.99, 200GB for $2.99, and 2TB for $9.99.

To me, 5GB might as well be zero. The smallest configuration for Apple’s most popular phone, the iPhone X, is 64GB. What does that 5GB offer for a 64GB phone? It seems paltry. To me, this is stingy and bad optics.

At the very least, I think Apple should match Google’s free 15GB and unlimited free photo storage. Even better, raise that bar. As is, this feels like nickel and diming people who are spending as much as $1,000 for a phone.

This from an article about Samsung’s latest and greatest:

We tested the 6GB model of the Note 9 with 128GB of storage, and we’ve run a handful of benchmarks so far with more to come. Spoiler alert: the iPhone X is still faster.

And:

The cream of the crop remains the iPhone X, which scored 10,357 with its A11 Bionic processor. And with an A12-powered iPhone X and iPhone X Plus on the horizon, Apple will likely widen its lead.

Doomed.

Bloomberg:

In Bengaluru’s busy Madiwala neighborhood, a Poorvika Mobile World shop is plastered with posters for Samsung and Xiaomi and filled with inexpensive phones from brands like China’s Oppo and Vivo. Off to one side is a forlorn display stand with the iPhone 6, 6s, and X, the latter sitting upside down. Despite a zero-interest payment plan and cash-back incentives, Apple Inc. is lucky if the iPhones account for 25 of the 1,000 smartphones the store sells each month, says manager Nagaraja B.C., who goes by one name. “The average budget of a shopper is about 10,000 rupees,” he says, roughly $150. The iPhone SE, the cheapest Apple model, costs almost twice that. For $100, shoppers can get a Xiaomi Redmi 5A with a bigger battery, better camera, and greater storage capacity.

And:

For years, Indian consumers have complained that Siri can’t process their requests in local languages, they have no access to Apple Pay, and Apple Maps can’t give them turn-by-turn directions or identify points of interest.

Apple has long been the high-priced spread, with a focus on tapping the moneyed crowd. The first quote above implies that the pricey iPhone is not a financial match for this particular market. The second quote seems more a result of that mismatch.

Once Apple figures out how to build product that fits this market, once they see the potential revenue here, Apple will no doubt apply their resources to solve the localization problem.

The Verge ran a review of their favorite phones. Top of the tops, the iPhone X.

Here’s what they had to say:

Apple’s latest iPhone isn’t just the most interesting iPhone in years, but it’s easily the best smartphone ever made. The iPhone X has almost everything you could think to ask for in a smartphone: blazing-fast performance, a gorgeous display, top-of-the-class cameras, loud, clear speakers, reliable battery life, and a head-turning design. In addition, the X is water resistant and can be recharged with a wireless pad. The main thing that most people will miss is a standard headphone jack.

Apple’s extensive support system, through both its own and carrier stores, is another incredibly important point in the iPhone’s favor. There’s simply no other company that provides as much support for a smartphone after you purchase it. On top of that, since it’s an iPhone, the iPhone X enjoys the broadest support of accessories and cases.

Doomed!

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

A report from supply chain sources, via Korean language publication The Bell, suggests that the largest of Apple’s 2018 iPhone lineup will be the most popular. Apple is set to announce an ‘iPhone X Plus’, or whatever Apple ends up branding it, with a 6.46-inch OLED screen, packing a ~6.5-inch screen into roughly the same size as the existing 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus.

And:

The Bell report says Apple has ordered more screen panels for the X Plus than any other model. It forecasts 45 million 6.46-inch panels, about 25 million panels for the 5.8-inch iPhone X successor, and 30 million 6.04-inch LCD screens for the new lower-priced flagship.

Not hard to believe the rumors of an iPhone X Plus, also not hard to believe that Apple will go with that name, if they do ship that phone. And not hard to believe it will become the most popular phone.

A 6.5 inch iPhone X Plus would be be a huge upgrade to the iPhone 8 Plus, the form-factor it would be replacing. Better screen, more pixels, what’s not to like? To me, the real question is one of price.

The iPhone X sold very well at its $999 price point last year, but the ‘super cycle’ of upgraders did not materialise in the way some investors expected.

The iPhone 8 starts at $699 and the iPhone 8 Plus at $799. Which leads to an iPhone X Plus entry price of $1099. Is that too high, too soon? We shall see.