Here’s the thing. The original iPhone didn’t sell well either compared to its successors and like the iPhone X, had a high price for its time. Steve Ballmer laughed at the price. So this is history repeating itself. The difference? Apple is still offering a brand new phone with the old design. So they can sell phones both to the Apple fans but also to the masses who may not yet see why the X is a big deal. Next year? X all the way.
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iPhone X Apple is losing its mainstream, non-fan core with the X
- Thread starter MarkB786
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The original iPhone was exclusive to certain carriers and expensive for its time sure. However once it became affordable and every carrier offered it, it became popular.
The smartphone market has matured a lot in 10 years with many manufacturers offering the same capabilities over a wide range of prices. It’s great there is choice but my point is why has Apple decided to focus its most innovative offering at only a small percentage of the global market? Surely they want FaceID and all the other things offered by the X to be as mainstream and in as many hands as possible?
I think offering dumbed down devices for the lions share of the market and then a premium niche device to a select few is rather risky. We know the global smartphone market has been shrinking over the past 2 years and other manufacturers have been trying to react, yet Apple has divided its user-base? I’m by no means an Android person but when you see the likes of Samsung offering identical hardware at much lower prices its not hard to understand why people are getting tempted to try other options. It’s also not hard to see why people are keeping phones longer than 2 years and maybe Apple has raised its prices to recoup the cost knowing many buying the X may not be buying again next year or the year after?
The thread title is correct though. The iPhone X is not for the mainstream iPhone user and this has been acknowledged by people like yourself with the admission the X is niche. Just seems an odd direction for a company who have fought for their place.
I’ve seen 3 in the wild so far. Two on my commute to work and 1 at a Mariah Carey concert.
No one third party retailer is not matric of the state of smartphone market in the UK, not even close.
iPhones are generally purchased through Apple or the carrier.
If you want unlocked Apple, subsidized carrier. Some use Apple iup program but not many.
Very few people purchase iPhones from car phone warehouse.
Cpw Mainly sells Android phones or tries to.
I only purchase my iPhones from the Apple store unlocked, all my friends and family do the same. I don’t know anyone who purchases a smartphone in 2017 through cpw.
Weren’t you the one claiming iPhone X wasn’t selling because there were no lines at a Carphone Warehouse store? SMH
I did not major in economics, but I did have to take a couple of classes MANY years ago. One class I took had a section on market saturation and things a company could do to combat that. While I don't remember most of the details, I think that is facing that conundrum now.
I think more iPhones are purchased through a carrier than directly through Apple due to price deals. Contract is still the most popular option for owning an iPhone which is why the carrier, CPW and sites like USwitch sell more iPhones than Apple in the UK. Apple stores are not present in every town and usually have one outlet per city. Apple is currently reducing the amount of physical stores across Europe due to online purchasing too. My nearest Apple store in 35 miles away and the next nearest is Bristol. Apple don’t offer deals like their competitor retailers online either.
I find it very hard to believe ‘all’ of your friends and family do this unless it is a very small group of course. When you say unlocked are you suggesting bought outright too?
I’ve just been to Curry’s PC World in Merthyr Tydfil and the CPW section was absolutely rammed with plenty of iPhone interest. CPW suffer supply chain issues as much as anybody else around iPhone launches so I think people do actually buy iPhones from them. I know colleagues and friends who use their upgrade program as they often offer extras that carriers don’t include.
The fact the very centre piece of their display in every store is iPhone related with an equal presence of Samsung suggests they do focus on the iPhone. It’s one of their biggest sellers despite a 60% drop in profits.
No I wasn’t so you wasted a bit of energy shaking your head there. Today was the first time I’ve set foot in a CPW store in nearly 12 months. Like most people I buy online these days to save queuing or interacting with pushy sales people.
X still be high class level here until one day Chinese provides way to make locked X be international version at 10$. When that day comes, X will be very popular here.
Don't think much about the mainstream, core fans, iPhone users are now everywhere, same as Android users. A pupil can own an iPhone 7 plus even her parent salary just same as price of an iPhone X international.version.
Don't think much about the mainstream, core fans, iPhone users are now everywhere, same as Android users. A pupil can own an iPhone 7 plus even her parent salary just same as price of an iPhone X international.version.
Yes, to face market saturation and to make their customers upgrade the hardware more often they could create an artificial obsolescence model.
Where the phone's processor slows down intentionally after a year or so and then makes it unbearable to use. In order that consumers buy new iphones more often.
If they did something like that they'd make billions more per year
I look at the issue in bold in another way. Walk into an an Apple store and you see several tables of iPhones with basically identical home screens, identical capabilities, etc.
What user functions does an X truly offer over 8? An 8 over a 7? The issue may not be 8 and older phones are ‘dumbed down,’ but that Apple didn’t really innovate enough on its recent phones.
Why does the word 'innovate' always need to be brought into Apple and how was it expected the iPhone should be changed on an annual basis? iPhones are incremental upgrades almost every single year with hardware and software. The iPhone X was the first year we saw changes in over four years with the new iPhone form factor, display and security method. I see others use the word innovate, sometimes I believe they don't fully understand what that word even means or how is it applied into the field of technology appropriately.
Here is what I mean by innovate
4S - Siri - new way to communicate with phone and use it
5 - New form factor with bigger screen
5S - Touch ID
6- Bigger screen and better cameras; Apple Pay (truly a new use case)
6S/7/8- all frankly minor iterations besides better cameras (which are now more important given Instagram/etc)
X- FaceId and form factor; faceId really replaces an existing technology and is not a new feature
Based on this, the last innovation to add a truly new feature was 6 with Apple Pay. Usually, form factor changes are the least innovative. Most of the updates since have been spec bumps or iterations. Apple needs to contiously add new use cases to the iPhone.
This is a patently false statement. Again, that's not what innovate means and I think you're conflating two different things. Face ID is new technology that uses facial mapping with the True depth sensors/camera. Given that Apple is introducing this technology, it doesn't have anything to replace that was remotely similar, because it has not existed prior . Touch ID was a totally different form and entity of biometric security that is ultimately being abandoned.
I know what ‘innovate’ means and after reading your post here I guess we didn’t see very much in the X. It introduced nothing completely new to the market although you could argue Apples FaceID was their own version, however it wasn’t particularly exciting. Most of the features were aspects that finally Apple decided to adopt in order to catch up with the competition.
Animojis appeared to be their biggest marketing point in the TV advertising and the jury is out on that feature I think.
The market is saturated anyway and there is very little Apple could really give us that is new at this point. Quite an underwhelming year really blighted by price hikes.
In the US the original iPhone was exclusive to the AT&T network, who was nothing more than a rebranded Cingular, and had one of the smallest footprints out of all the carriers, besides maybe t mobile at the time.
I agree. I had my phone in and out of AT&T so often I was forbidden, after a while, to do business with them. Went to Verizon and have never looked back.
Simply wait for when the actual unit sales per device are released (leaked.)The 8 Plus will be right there with the Face Farce Phone. 
How is “5 - new form factor suth bigger screen” and “6 - bigger screen and better cameras” innovation and X is not?
Let’s face it - you don’t like the X and you’re trying to downplay its significance. Nice try.
I don’t know what qualifies for “innovative”, but if any iPhone other than the first one were innovative, the X is innovative as f#%#.
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How do you know? You speak for the Human population?
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Simply wait for when the actual unit sales per device are released (leaked.)The 8 Plus will be right there with the Face Farce Phone.
Could be. But it must be hard for you, not having that Face Farce Phone.
It’s a farce for what reason? It’s a phone that’s better in pretty much every way to the 8 plus apart from less usable screen.Simply wait for when the actual unit sales per device are released (leaked.)The 8 Plus will be right there with the Face Farce Phone.
Simply wait for when the actual unit sales per device are released (leaked.)The 8 Plus will be right there with the Face Farce Phone.
It will be interesting if this quarter's sales beat the year-ago quarter's sales. Or at least comes close.
It will disprove two myths:
"No one wants a tired four-generation-old design..." (iPhone 8)
"No one will pay for $1,000+ for a phone..." (iPhone X)
Or... the bulk of iPhone sales could be iPhone 7, 6S and SE... who knows!
Last year's Holiday quarter (and current record) was 78.3 million iPhones. Any guesses of this quarter's total sales number and estimated product mix? Place your bets!
FaceID is not a new feature? Okay... I will give you that FaceID is replacing TouchID, but what about the underlying technology? The dot projector? That is certainly a new feature that has utility beyond FaceID, and there will probably be a rear-facing dot projector within a year or two.
As a techie the dot projector is fascinating to me, but I know this is just the first iteration of a technology that will be much bigger in the future. In a few years there will be rear-facing dot projectors and all sorts of applications for these tools that go beyond FaceID, Animoji, and TruDepth camera technology. This technology may not seem that innovative now, but it will in the future. There is already a game you can control with your eyebrows. That might seem trivial, but these sorts of fun proof-of-concept projects often lead to bigger things.
Coming from the iPhone 6 I'm mostly excited to upgrade from the 6 to the X for one big reason: The dual camera with OIS on both cameras in a smaller than iPhone Plus form factor. As a photographer that pretty much sold me on the X full stop.
No, just my own personal opinion as an iPhone user who’s opinion is as good as anybody else’s including yours.
Not every opinion has to be fluffy and sprinkled with sugar.
The iPhone X is an excellent phone. I have used mine for a week now but I don't really see how it's worth $999 starting price. It's display is better than my 7 Plus. It's faster and has a better battery and a better design. But we were getting this stuff at the usual 700 price point for years now. I don't see anything here which adds $300 premium to the starting price of the 8 Plus. The display is still smaller. The oled display is about the only major change I genuinely like. The infinite blacks make for a clearly superior display. FaceID works 90% of the time but its still not as fast as TouchID to me. I am paying this amount because it's the industry standard now but it seems Apple is going for price over volume.
You guys are all Guinea Pigs. Face ID Beta Testers.
It will be interesting if this quarter's sales beat the year-ago quarter's sales. Or at least comes close.
It will disprove two myths:
"No one wants a tired four-generation-old design..." (iPhone 8)
"No one will pay for $1,000+ for a phone..." (iPhone X)
Or... the bulk of iPhone sales could be iPhone 7, 6S and SE... who knows!
Last year's Holiday quarter (and current record) was 78.3 million iPhones. Any guesses of this quarter's total sales number and estimated product mix? Place your bets!
Great post. I'm looking at 80-83 Million phones. I think the 7/7+ sales will also surprise many. The SE will be hot as always. The X Hype really fell fast after the first 30 Days. Face ID needs at least another generation before I'd even "Look" at it.
I predict the X outsells the 8+ by less than 1 million devices.
You guys are all Guinea Pigs. Face ID Beta Testers.
Great post. I'm looking at 80-83 Million phones. I think the 7/7+ sales will also surprise many. The SE will be hot as always. The X Hype really fell fast after the first 30 Days. Face ID needs at least another generation before I'd even "Look" at it.
I predict the X outsells the 8+ by less than 1 million devices.
A beta that works better than Touch ID? If that’s what you say beta is I can’t wait to see how amazing it is after another year or so
Yeah this is a point I’ve made repeatedly and very few seem to remember we had a new iPhone every 2 years with a redesign and it was £300+ less. The X is the redesign but this time has been marketed as ‘premium’ and ‘the future’. I feel a bit short changed and for that reason won’t bother with that variant.