Apple has a philosophy and business model that we should all be familiar with by now.
If it doesn't work for you, then move on.
Unbelievable this concept hasn't sunk in yet.....
I'm extremely excited to be getting the 5S. Having been solely on my GS4 the last week +, I'm ready to brr back home.
For me, Android is great - but not far superior to iOS because iOS simply works for me. It does the things I need to do extremely well and without hiccup.
Keep drinking the Koolaid OP.
So IMO the 5s is enough to move some units, but apple has lost the gadget guys who brought them envouge in the first place, and that is a big issue since all my iphone wielding friends get green with envy when they see the crazy stuff I'm doing with my note 2.
Apple doesn't target the 18-40 age range.
Apple targets household incomes over $70k a year in the USA. It's a very small yet significant distinction.
Walmart customer average household income is 35k a year. Target household income is 42k. Costco target household income is 70k a year.
Costco appeals to more affluent customers who spend more money.
Myself and a core group of my buddies are all "gadget guys". We all are the demographic that apple used to covet. 18-40 year old guys who are creative types with enough disposable income to have the hottest new thing. Sometime around the 4s apple list the race to be the most cutting edge phone. Android is leaps and bounds better for guys like us. It just does more. Anytime I get bored I can find a cool little feature to enable on my phone, and it really has become nearly as capable as my macbook air.
Apple is no longer designing phones for us. They are making phones for everyone. A few years ago paying $30 per month for data on your phone was a crazy concept reserved only for the affluent.
The only problem is that gadget guys are the tastemakers of the world. Our ambivalence to iOS will eventually catch up with them.
It is hard to feel excited about that new Iphone when the dorky guy in the office is playing games on his 5.7 inch phone with a ps3 controller. Then plugging it into his Sony car stereo with full mirroring, all the while torrenting the last season of game of thrones.
So IMO the 5s is enough to move some units, but apple has lost the gadget guys who brought them envouge in the first place, and that is a big issue since all my iphone wielding friends get green with envy when they see the crazy stuff I'm doing with my note 2.
#2. You overestimate the influence of tech geeks on the general public.
Never really thought about the usefulness of a fingerprint sensor until I thought about it like this.
It takes 3-4 seconds to home button->slide to unlock->enter in my pass code (longer when I was on alpha numeric.)
I probably unlock my phone ~50 times per day which equates to roughly 200 seconds of unlocking my phone or ~3 minutes per day wasted accessing my phone.
Across an entire year that is ~1,000 minutes or 18 hours I have spent unlocking my phone which is ~$5,400 in lost productivity.
And Apple's stock is tanking. Down 5% in just the first hour of trading. More of the same + no innovation = sell shares
Like speculation on the stock market has any indication about anything. I love the people that try to use the "stock market" angle just to take a dig at Apple instead of using rational thought.
Android has 52% market share vs 39% in the USA market apple lost even its home field advantage when the gs3 came out.
There stock also took a **** this morning and is down 40 bucks from yesterdays open.
Your post makes no sense as the whole reason the plastic 5 came out is to bring a cheaper phone to the market.
You can also get an iPhone 5 at Walmart and for the longest time they were selling the 5 for 129 with a 2 year contract while the top end androids were selling for 199 and the note 2 even today is 299 with a 2 year contract and that's for a 16gb version.
So android is not only more expensive its also out selling apple in its home market and getting crushed outside the usa
Amen. I am not a troll or a hater. I meant this post more as a dear john letter to apple. It isn't too late. If apple diversified its line up and offered a broader range of phones, sped up its release dates, and loosened a few restrictions on iOS development higher end users would come back.
Apple has transitioned from making the highest end hardware on the market to milquetoast comoditised phones.
They can do better, and everyone knows it. But then what incremental update will they sell for Iphone 6?
Reaching lower with the 5c is the worst thing I have heard in a while. Why not shoot for the stars with a Iphone pro cost be damned cram everything and the kitchen sink in. People will buy it.
I read a headline this morning that pretty well sums it up:
Apple chooses profits over marketshare.
Might want to include the entire title "Apple Chooses Profits Over Marketshare for Flash-Based iPods"
http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Chooses+Profits+Over+Marketshare+for+FlashBased+iPods/article4197.htm
Android phones are not more expensive for the most part. With exception of high end android devices most android phones are much cheaper than iPhones.
Also most phones are sold in USA on postpaid plans.
It's a well known fact (Sprint CEO already admitted carriers subsidize the iPhone 40% more than any other phones on the market). So its pretty safe to assume sprint and other carriers are paying much less in bulk for Galaxy S4 than they are paying for iPhones.
So tell me. Are android phones more expensive than iPhones?
I don't care what 4th place carriers subsidize there plans out as they also do the same for apple but the gs3,note,note2 and gs4 all had the same exact msrp as the iPhone 5