‘Apple must’ be ‘very afraid’

Jonny Evans

Watching Apple since 1999. I don't say what they should do. I say what they might do. They sometimes do.

3 Responses

  1. Gk says:

    I agree. While low cost phones are getting more advanced this mostly affects the mid-range.

    Cost cutting to the extreme to get the phones down to these price points cuts off any room for future developments. New/good hardware is expensive and low cost manufacturers won’t use it. We’ve seen this race to bottom many times before.

    Cheap phone makers are also reliant on Google proving them a free OS – surely saving them billions in development costs by now. How long more will Google keep subsidising this and what’s the catch? We’re seeing Google impose more and more conditions with each release.

  2. Mike Smith says:

    Cheap phone manufacturers aren’t reliant on Google for a free OS at all. There’s Tizen, Firefox, Sailfish, Windows. Google could even stop their development of Android at this point, and others (such as Cyanogen) would continue with it.

    We’re at the point now where most people don’t need a better flagship. We already have phones that can shoot 4K video and have more power than is necessary for the current crop of apps. So it’s natural that phones will get cheaper, and that can only serve to squeeze margins. My handset is two years old now and does everything that the latest phones do. It has a higher-res screen than the iPhone 5s, so what do I gain by “upgrading”? The growth area will for handsets like the Moto G – every bit as good as the iPhone 5c (except for the camera) at a quarter of the price.

    • Jonny Evans says:

      So where’s the business in sophisticated low margin products? Where’s the extra bit of cash you need to invest into the platform in order to deliver better user experiences? Doesn’t the lack of that capital damn us all to incredibly average and unrewarding experiences? Must Apple always be the only firm that does actually invest in good experiences? And is it right that that investment is then “benchmarked” by the bottom shifters at the low end of the industry you describe?

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