
Apple iPhone Supplier Foxconn Planning Deep Cost Cuts - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/apple-s-biggest-iphone-assembler-is-said-to-plan-deep-cost-cuts
======
dangoor
It's possible that this turns out to be a real sign, and I think other
commenters have some good reasons why it could be. That said, I have been an
AAPL stock owner and watcher for a few years and have noticed a pattern. Every
September, Apple introduces new iPhones. Later in the fall, the articles come
out citing weak demand.

2017: "'Anemic' iPhone 8 demand drags Apple shares lower",
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone/anemic-
iphon...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone/anemic-
iphone-8-demand-drags-apple-shares-lower-idUSKBN1CO1E7)

2016: "Apple may be cutting iPhone 7 orders as demand falls",
[https://www.cultofmac.com/456431/apple-may-cutting-
iphone-7-...](https://www.cultofmac.com/456431/apple-may-cutting-
iphone-7-orders-demand-falls/)

2015: "Apple stock slides on claims of slashed iPhone component orders, weak
iPhone 6s demand", [https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/01/apple-stock-
slide...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/12/01/apple-stock-slides-on-
claims-of-slashed-iphone-component-orders-weak-iphone-6s-demand)

Note that there were articles in those years also suggesting high demand. My
point being that articles suggesting soft demand happen every year. Except
2014 when the iPhone 6 came out. Everyone was in total agreement then that
demand was insane (and that quarter proved to be very hot indeed for Apple).

My point is that we won't truly know what demand looked like for the new
iPhones until late January when Apple announces earnings.

~~~
706f6f70
There seem to be many unique things to this year though:

* Apple announces it will no longer report unit sales. This is a clear shift in strategy.

* Orders have been cut not once, but twice.

* Suppliers have been slaughtered in earnings reports.

* Suppliers have cut staff and are trying to control costs.

I agree there is a "cry wolf" element to this, but sometimes the wolf really
does show up.

~~~
reaperducer
_Apple announces it will no longer report unit sales. This is a clear shift in
strategy._

I thought that at first, too. Then I read that Apple was an outlier in
reporting these figures. I'm OK with Apple not reporting these kinds of
numbers if it allows the company to focus on quality of product instead of
satiating the salivating stockholders (of which I am one).

 _Orders have been cut not once, but twice._

We don't actually know this as a fact. It is pure conjecture.

It is what a bunch of so-called supply chain "analysts" say, but they say it
all the time, and are almost always wrong.

I wish I could be wrong as often as these Wall Street types and still keep my
job.

The only people who whiff more often than Wall Street supply chain analysts
are five-year-old softball players.

~~~
kllrnohj
> I'm OK with Apple not reporting these kinds of numbers if it allows the
> company to focus on quality of product instead of satiating the salivating
> stockholders

There's no possibility of any kind that not reporting these numbers will do
anything to the quality of the product.

They still are doing all the exact same amount of work to actually gather the
numbers, since they internally need to know. They are only skipping the last
step of putting that number in the report they give to investors. Nothing
changes about how Apple is operating by not reporting that number.

That doesn't automatically mean it was a bad number, either, it could have
just been a shift to avoid providing more information than necessary similar
to the rest of their industry. But it's not going to do squat for anyone's day
job at Apple, either. The people that would actually worry about that number
still have that number.

~~~
Skunkleton
The point is that by not reporting the number, they can let the number slip
without pissing off investors. I am not sure how letting that number slip will
lead to higher quality though.

~~~
dwaite
My speculation is that Apple believes that people are lengthening their
purchase interval on new phones not primarily because of cost but because they
don't see the value. So, Apple is focusing on higher cost "1st year" phones
which provide more differentiation on value to the old phones.

They also may stop just discounting the phones as they become "2nd year"
phones, similar to the setup they have with the iPad and iPad Pros.

This both means more profit per phone to account for the decrease in sales due
to lengthening time between phone purchases, and a bit more motivation to
update to the next sexy 1st year phone rather than the cheaper models due to
explicit feature differentiation.

------
lostgame
I’m disappointed by the discontinuation of the iPhone SE, and I’m not the only
one.

Frankly, all of Apple’s recently-introduces hardware options have a bad
combination of being too expensive and simply not appealing enough, the lack
of upgradeability on MacBook Pros being a major example.

~~~
wingkongex
Personally, I think they've become too big, too heavy and too expensive.

The XR is honestly a huge misstep, IMO. It's bigger, heavier and dramatically
more feature-less than its 2018 counterparts. Who is this phone for?

~~~
snarf21
People who want the cult of the new but can't afford the XS.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Why does it always have to be "can't afford"?

How about "can't justify"?

------
ed_blackburn
In the UK a new iPhone is ~£1250 there are so many more things I would rather
spend that money on.

I spend so much time with my phone, I use it all day rely on it so much, it's
the epicentre of my digital life.

But still, I think it's too expensive. I think once you touch the £1,000 mark
you have to start proving far more worth than polished marketing. My work
thankfully proved an iPhone 8, otherwise, I was going to buy an iPhone 6 or 7
[0]. I just cannot justify the extra money for the difference in the product.

[0] [https://www.johnlewis.com/browse/electricals/mobile-
phones-a...](https://www.johnlewis.com/browse/electricals/mobile-phones-
accessories/iphone/iphone-6/iphone-7/price=250-500/_/N-7bqwZ1z0jye4Z1z07s5bZ6ssu)

~~~
udp
Also in the UK, and I can't remember the last time I actually _bought_ a phone
outright. I resigned myself years ago to paying ~£40/mo for a contract and
insurance. Every 2 years I get an upgrade to the latest iPhone.

~~~
cc439
This is the funniest thing I've read in a while. I remember the rest of the
world mocking the American model for cell phone plans (contract lock-in with
high monthly rates in exchange for cheap uogrades) and praising the model used
in the UK and most of the EU (no contract, incredibly cheap rates but phones
are purchases outright). American carriers finally came around to adopting the
UK/EU model in the past few years as people began to become more accepting of
the idea that the latest smartphone is worth keeping for more than 2 years if
it means halving their monthly service payment and now you're telling me the
UK has adopted the old American business model?

I find this to be hilarious for reasons I can't quite articulate but going
from a model where service is decoupled from hardware to a model where you're
contractually obligated to pay a set bundled fee is a 180 degree switch too
inexplicable to ignore.

~~~
photojosh
Australia had the USA's model, and to a certain degree, still has. But it used
to be that if you wanted a reasonable amount of data (back in the days where 2
up to 8GB was "reasonable"), you'd be best off to get one of the expensive
phones on a plan (say $80-100/mo).

But these days, those expensive plans have 20-30GB a month, whereas I'm still
only using the data I was back then, and you can get plans for $20/mo for
4-6GB. So I've now gone to buying the phone outright and getting a cheap plan,
and save a ton of $.

I suspect a lot of people are still under the mentality that they need the
amount of data included in the more expensive plans, without ever checking
that to be the case.

Of course, if you're streaming YouTube/Netflix/music at the high bandwidth
rates and not even doing the bare minimum to pull down that data while on
WiFi, all bets are off.

------
jillesvangurp
I'm guessing next year's refresh will feature a much lower price. I think
Apple is finding out the hard way that increasing prices means lower volumes.
They might even pull off a mid year price reduction. They've done that before.

Despite not owning one, I believe Apple can easily fix most of their issues by
simply reducing the price and growing volumes again. They are about to lose
the teenage market. That's mostly a cost problem. For the past few years
they've cashed in on their popularity by squeezing the high end of the market.
Now that that is running dry, they need to pay attention to their bottom line
again or they risk permanently alienating a new generation of users.

My guess is that a 500$ base model that doesn't suck, would be quite popular.
Of course their problem is that they have little to differentiate the 1200 $
model from that and that most of their competition is selling quite nice
phones at or below that price.

~~~
applecore
Likely, a smaller phone in the form factor of the (now discontinued) iPhone
SE.

~~~
rusk
The original SE was released "out of cycle" so maybe the sequel will be too?

~~~
ksec
Well the Se replaced the iPhone 5s at the time. But this time around there is
no "replacement" to be made as they have discounted the SE.

~~~
rusk
No, the 6 replaced the 5s. The SE came a few months afterwards.

That they didn't actually discontinue the 5s at the time is incidental.

The point is, that they do release things out of cycle so just because they
didn't do it at the usual time doesn't mean they won't.

------
tyingq
I wonder if there's a bit of the "end of Moore's law" in play as well. There
appears to be a slump not just in iPhones, but in all smart phones:
[https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/22/gartner-reports-first-
ever...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/22/gartner-reports-first-ever-global-
decline-in-smartphone-sales/)

Basically, the delta in speed and functionality gains for new models isn't
what it used to be, so people hang onto old phones longer. Personally, I buy
~$150 androids because I tend to drop them, and a $1k phone would be a bad
idea for me.

The end of "phone subsidies" probably also plays into this.

~~~
zip1234
Actually, the new A12 chips are considerably faster than the A11s. Apple's
chips in general are much faster than their Android equivalents:
[https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-
benchmarks](https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks)
[https://browser.geekbench.com/android-
benchmarks](https://browser.geekbench.com/android-benchmarks)

~~~
nafey
That might be true but most phones are not running application that leverage
that performance. The apps are more often than not optimised for lower
performance and if you spend most of your time in
Safari/Messenger/Instagram/Whatsapp A12 wont give you a lot of performance
bump as compared to A11

~~~
scarface74
It helps with longevity. It’s what allows an iPhone 5s from 2013 to run the
latest OS.

------
rdschouw
The increased pricing changed how I perceive replacing my X with a new one. I
used to routinely upgrade yearly up to the SE. Now, I'll keep I plan to keep
using it until it no longer functions. Similar to my laptop upgrade cycle
which is every 3 years now.

I think Apple is biting themselves in the foot with the increased pricing. I
think it is significantly slowing down the replacement cycle. My dad typically
buys my old phone and then his phone goes to my mom. Now, he replaced the
batteries since no phone is coming his way through me.

On the upside, it's better for the environment.

~~~
scarface74
Apple fully expects the replacement cycle to slow. They said that they are
trying to make phones last longer. They are focusing on service revenue and
accessories like the Watch.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Which is a good thing, I can't see why these devices shouldn't last five years
or more.

~~~
scarface74
The mobile phone cycle is just a redux of what happened with PCs until around
2007. Computers were getting a lot faster and software coming out actually
demanded better computers.

Honestly, around 2009 and the introduction of the Core 2 Duo, computers became
good enough for most people.

I just retired a circa 2009 Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Dell laptop with 8GB of RAM
running Windows 10 with one of the last great 15 inch 1920x1200 displays (as
opposed to the 1920x1080) as my Plex Server about two months ago.

In day to day use, I couldn’t tell the difference between that and newer
computers besides the spinning hard drive vs SSD. It has a gigabit Ethernet
port and was wired into my network. It had just as much of RAM as most
computers sold today, the hard drive was the same size (but much slower), the
screen was better than what comes in many consumer laptops and most computers
today don’t come with gigabit Ethernet.

In 2009, a computer from 2000 would have been unusable.
([http://www.topdesignmag.com/top-performance-computer-
looked-...](http://www.topdesignmag.com/top-performance-computer-looked-the-
year-2000/))

Mobile processors are now getting that way. While an iPhone 5S from 2013 is
perfectly usable running iOS 13, there is no way that an iPhone 3G from 2008
would have been something you wanted to use in 2013.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I tell people the 6S is when phones became fast enough. It doubled the RAM and
speed of the 6. It opens apps nearly as fast as any of the new phones[0].

[0] Day to Day apps. Not heavy games and such.

~~~
scarface74
The only reason I upgraded from my 6s to 8 plus was the massive battery. I
gave my son my old 6s - with a newish battery and the Apple battery case and
he loves it.

------
jghn
For me it is because they’ve become too large. Last year I got an 8 as I
really needed a new device and the size is pushing it. The X models are larger
still

------
andrewgjohnson
I think the reason has nothing to do with the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, X, XR or XS. I
think the reason has to do with 2 back-to-back iOS updates that didn't hugely
slow down my iPhone 7 Plus.

I'm used to really wanting the newer iPhone when I update iOS 12 months after
buying but the last 2 updates haven't fit that mold.

~~~
themagician
There is also just a general kind of burn out. In phones, in social media,
etc. Maginal utility from consumer tech is now so marginal that people are
starting to not upgrade every year. It was bound to happen. I’m sure someone
will come up with a more creative name for this when it starts to impact stock
prices.

------
kylehotchkiss
My iPhone 7s Plus with a LifeProof case is still going strong in nearly mint
condition (despite the battery at about 85% capacity). Apple's building phones
that last longer.

Also, I can't think of too many new apps I've installed lately or performance
issues with my current ones. Hopefully at some point, the market will reward
Apple for building reliable phones (I say that knowing about all the repair
bulletins they've released these past few months...)

~~~
nicoburns
To be fair, my Samsung S7 from the previous year is also still running
completely fine. Apple's competition are also building reliable phones..

~~~
outime
Apple’s competition doesn’t provide phones with many years of official
software updates. This may be just fine for many people, but if you care about
security, features... then it’s not reliable enough.

~~~
dethac
2 years OS, 3 years monthly security, 4 years quarterly security. Plus, app
updates are not tied to OS updates, so vulnerabilities in the browser and
other built-in apps can be more easily patched.

Would 5 years of OS updates be appreciated? Of course! But 4 years of security
updates isn't so bad.

------
p49k
Relevant rebuttal regarding making conclusions based on supply chain rumors
from AppleInsider:

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/11/19/poor-news-
curatio...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/11/19/poor-news-curation-at-
bloomberg-cnbc-reuters-creating-misleading-iphone-supply-chain-panic)

------
LiterallyDoge
The new phone offerings across the board are weak. It just feels like useless
gadgetry now on the same candybar.

------
curious_fella2
Since people seem to be talking about what this means for Apple stock...

Apple's PE ratio is 15. For any given company this is a very good number. Add
to this that Apple has the growth potential of a tech stock (e.g. Google has
PE ratio of 40, people pay a premium for the stock because they expect it to
grow).

Certainly Apple is very undervalued?

~~~
dwaite
It used to be the P/E was low because people were nervous about Apple's
future. Now people are nervous because they can't figure out how to evaluate
the growth potential of a $1 tril+ company.

To my limited sophistication as an investor (who owns some AAPL), it seems to
me Cook has tried several things to increase stock stability. One is to make
it look a bit more like a utility stock for those who wish to see it as one,
such as by paying dividends. Another is to signal to the market they consider
the stock to be undervalued via a their stock buyback program.

------
themagician
I was the kind of person who would upgrade every year... and not just my
phone, but a bunch of other tech.

I currently have a 7+ and haven’t bothered to upgrade. The upgrades are so
marginal and the time it takes to actually upgrade seems like a hassle these
days. It takes me a good 8 hours of work to upgrade a device—transferring this
and that, getting things set up, learning the new gestures (which don’t do
anything fundamental new), moving over 2FA (even though Authy makes it a
little easier, you still have to set up things like Mail, Gmail, etc.).

If I buy a new iPhone tomorrow it will probably take me all day to have it be
a clone of my current phone in every app and whatnot. Just not worth it. I’ll
do it when the battery becomes insufferable, but the reality is that that new
iPhone isn’t worth the hassle, despite how relatively hassle free iCloud makes
it.

------
dmitriid
Why is it that when people talk about Foxconn, they only talk about Apple?
Foxconn supplies _everyone_.

~~~
matwood
For the same reason this happens every year, Apple gets clicks.

I don't think we have good Pixel 3 estimates yet, but earlier this year Apple
was selling as many iPhones in a week as Google sold Pixel 2s all year.
Outside of stock analysts, no one cares how many phones Google or Samsung
sell. So if you want to generate clicks, you have to link it to Apple.
Remember the compromised server article from not long ago?

------
ksec
Foxconn assembles over 60% of the Smartphone worldwide, and it could very well
be the rest of the Smartphone vendor are lowering their 2019 forecast. People
in China is taking longer to buying new phone, mainly because their current
one are already good enough for most of their purposes. Which is AliPay,
WeChat and basic consumption activity. China is also tightening on Credit,
which means BBK and Xiaomi can no longer flush with supply and figure out
sales later, they have to be careful with their inventory.

It could also very well be another power play from Foxconn, which is one of
the largest private employers in the country.

------
JansjoFromIkea
I'm under the impression at least part of Apple's unusual behaviour this year
(e.g. no longer reporting sales) is down to the XR.

From what I can see, the XR (or its successors) are to occupy the role the SE
previously had, and the iPhone 7 has now. It's a long game that plays out two
years from now (by which point they couldn't abruptly introduce a one camera,
720p LCD screen without it looking very very much like the 5C).

With a selling price of $800, I can't imagine they expected many people to buy
it over (1) keeping their current phone or (2) paying a few hundred more for a
flagship model. Once you go that high in price the difference makes less and
less.

------
askaboutit
I’d jump on an Android phone if it had OSX. Google is a privacy nightmare.

~~~
helveticastand
There's also LineageOS which is great when it comes to being in control of
probably, but unfortunately not all phones have it supported officially.

~~~
helveticastand
Control of privacy _

------
ramshanker
4 may be a small number when the TOTAL number of iphone suppliers considered.

~~~
forkLding
Foxconn produces at least half of the Iphones around the world, source:
[https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-factory-
foxconn...](https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-factory-foxconn-
china-photos-tour-2018-5)

Lumentum etc. are also some of Apple's largest parts suppliers.

------
tinus_hn
Apple and just about every manufacturer supplier Foxconn [...]

------
sundvor
The largish one is ~$2150 AUD in Australia...

------
tanilama
Well, right now for me, iPhone's biggest feature is its price tag, in which it
is its own league. The rest of the package is lackluster

------
prolikewh0a
Maybe it's because I can get a modern Android One phone for $150 that will
day-to-day perform right with an iPhone in normal use cases, with a headphone
jack, notched IPS screen, IR blaster, FM radio, dual removable sim with SD
storage to 256GB, 4000mAh battery that lasts 12 hours screen-on-time, camera
that will compete with any modern mid range ~$400 phone, with full metal
construction except for where RF needs to escape.

Most people aren't playing PUBG or running CPU intensive tasks on their
phones, they're texting, reading the news, watching twitch/youtube, or looking
at instagram/facebook/slack/discord.

$1000+ is absolute insanity. $749 for the XR is blatantly ripping you off.

------
krmmalik
Here's something I received in my inbox a couple of days ago. (copied and
pasted).

\---

October can be an unforgiving month.

The terrible stock market crash that signaled the beginning of the Great
Depression was in October of 1929.

The stock market crash known as Black Monday was in October of 1987.

In 1997, the Asian financial crisis sparked another stock market crash in… you
guessed it—October.

And back in 2007 at the height of the giant bubble that almost brought down
the entire financial system, the stock market peaked once again in… October.

It’s not that October is particular cursed. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. But
I do find it strangely ominous that asset prices seemed to have peaked last
month (October) and have been in decline ever since.

Real estate prices are starting to show signs of strain; more than one-third
of homes for sale had a large price cut in October-- the most discounting in
the past eight years.

Corporate and government bonds are falling.

The S&P 500 is down 7%, and the big popular technology stocks that have been
fueling the boom in stock prices for the past several years have been
violently declining.

Facebook is down 36% from its peak. Apple is down 18% (and down more today on
news of production cuts for iPhones). Semiconductor giant NVIDIA is down 45%.

Oh, it’s not just in the US either.

Deutsche Bank says 89% of all asset classes it tracks are negative this year –
the worst year since 1901.

This is often how a big downturn begins: gradually, then suddenly. Asset
prices stew and fester, slowly grinding downward for months while people
maintain hope that prices will recover.

I remember spending time in Florida back in 2007 when property prices had
already started declining.

All the real estate agents I met kept telling themselves ridiculous
affirmations about how the market was going to come roaring back soon, and the
good times would return.

Less than a year later the worst financial panic since the Great Depression
had set in. And it would be years before prices would finally recover.

Remember—asset prices peaked in October 2007. But the giant financial crisis
didn’t kick off for nearly a year, in September 2008.

We might be in a similar situation today; it’s possible that markets peaked
last month. And we’re now in the “stew and fester” phase where prices
gradually decline while people keep hope that the boom times are coming just
around the corner.

And then, within a year or so, something sets off another huge crisis that
pops the bubble once and for all… just like the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers
did back in 2008.

We won’t know what that event will be until after it happens.

But what we do know for sure is that the last financial crisis was caused by
too much idiotic debt in the system.

Banks were lending money to legions of borrowers who had a history of not
paying their debts… and then actually pretended like these toxic loans were
great investments.

Today, we’re seeing the same stupid debt work its way into the corporate and
government sectors.

Instead of giving million-dollar mortgages to unemployed borrowers with a
history of default, investors are loaning billions of dollars to money-losing
zombie businesses, or to governments that are already in debt up to their
eyeballs, all while pretending these are safe, credible investments.

Total global debt back in 2008 was about $173 trillion, worth about 280% of
GDP.

Today total global debt is $250 trillion, worth about 320% of GDP. It’s only
gotten worse.

This is the sequel of the same movie we saw ten years ago… and it would be
pretty foolish to not expect the same ending."

Proper preparation....

------
seddin
This is good for the average consumer, people should not be buying very
expensive devices with programmed obsolence!

------
nemacol
Guess apple will have to release some extra "security patches" to those older
iPhones. Try to bump up those number for next year.

Edit: Downvote all you want. Apple did this before, it is not hard to imagine
that they would do it again. I am hardly crying wolf with my comment.

~~~
macintux
Apple has made it clear they're aiming for longevity. iOS 12 actually improved
performance for older phones.

That's why you're being downvoted.

~~~
nemacol
And all those industrialists are going to clean up their act. That politician
is really sorry about that thing they did and will never do it again. The
financial sector pinky swears to never crash the economy again.

No reason to trust what apple is saying. They are a company. If it becomes
financially viable to play those tricks again they will do it.

~~~
macintux
Apple has fallen short once when they sold an older model for a bit too long,
and didn't support it with OS upgrades for more than a year or so, but
compared to 90% of Android devices over the years that's not terrible.

Apple is a Rorschach test. You see what you want to see.

------
tomglynch
Besides removing a few features, there's little difference between an iPhone 6
plus and the current model.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _there 's little difference between an iPhone 6 plus and the current model_

Upgraded to XS after wading into a pool with my 6. Biggest hidden feature is
the electronic SIM card. I can buy international data with GigSky for much
cheaper than AT&T would let me.

~~~
overcast
The dual electronic SIM is awesome, I agree. I haven't used GigSky before, but
their prices are super cheap in comparison. Definitely using that on my next
trip overseas. How do you differentiate which data plan you'll use though?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _How do you differentiate which data plan you 'll use though?_

I was in Iceland for a week, so 2GB for 15 days and $30 worked well. (I was on
the fence about 5GB for 30 days and $50, but in the end didn’t need it.)

~~~
overcast
Nice! Meant more in the phone. How does the phone differentiate which data
plan to use?

------
exabrial
It's not really that hard:

* Headphone jack * De-nerf NFC * Switch to usb-c * Send high res mms to non iPhones (this will also avoid regulatory trouble)

I'm fed up with Google and Facebook and am ready to move, but the fact they
can't get these simple things right is mind blowing.

~~~
udp
Most users don't care about any of those things.

\- You can use the included adapter instead of a headphone jack. I do this
every day to plug my phone into the car and it's no big deal. If I had a newer
car stereo it'd be bluetooth anyway, and wireless headphones are pretty cheap
now.

\- What would a normal user use NFC for other than Apple Pay?

\- Most people couldn't care less if the port is Lightning, USB-C, or micro
USB so long as it charges their phone.

\- iMessage works flawlessly, and the standard (at least here in the UK) is
WhatsApp rather than MMS now to communicate across the iOS/Android void.

~~~
zaarn
\- Dongles are annoying, 3.5mm is delightfully simple and universally
supported across the audio industry. It's not hard to implement and can carry
a fairly high quality signal if your DAC is good enough. If you want digital,
a normal 3.5mm jack plus cable should be able to carry enough bandwidth and
still remain backwards compatible. I would see that as an improvement over
simply-analog-3.5.

\- The normal end user wouldn't care about the difference in NFC but banks
would be thankful for not having to pay Apple for the privilege of having
their customer use an iPhone.

\- True but people care about not having to care and a universal charging port
is good for that. Then people can just plug chargers into things and it works.
No thinking required. And less waste too because vendors might not have to
package chargers with every device and people won't have to buy new chargers
every new iPhone release.

~~~
MBCook
> banks would be thankful for not having to pay Apple for the privilege of
> having their customer use an iPhone.

Could you expand on this? I’m not aware of banks having to pay Apple.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Apple takes a cut of every ApplePay transaction.

~~~
artimaeis
Source?

The source I found [0] indicates otherwise:

> _Are there additional fees to accept Apple Pay?_

> _Apple does not charge users, merchants or developers to use Apple Pay for
> payments._

[0] - [https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/get-
started/](https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/get-started/)

Edit:

Looks like they charge banks and payment networks for the transaction. I
suppose it's possible that the networks pass that fee back to the retailer at
some point. Can't find great sources for any of that though.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Parent: > Could you expand on this? I’m not aware of banks having to pay Apple

Me: > Apple takes a cut of every ApplePay transaction.

Your comment: > Looks like they charge banks and payment networks for the
transaction.

Details: [https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-
pay/](https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-pay/)

