
Don’t want a 7S because it’s boring, don’t want to spend $1200 on iPhone Pro - ginger123
https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/speculation_on_new_iphone_pricing
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ginger123
Interesting theory from Gruber ! "If you want to argue that Apple should never
create an iPhone with a higher starting price than what we have today, you’re
implicitly arguing that Apple should never put any components into a new
iPhone that can’t be made at iPhone 7’s scale. I think that’s dangerous
strategically, leaving Apple open to attack from competitors making premium
phones with components (cameras, displays, new sensors, new battery
technologies, etc.) that can only be produced in single-digit millions per
quarter."

~~~
giobox
I think Gruber is right, but the problem that's going to be hard to sell to
some buyers is that many of these "supply constrained" components are _only_
an issue for Apple's giant sales. I think it's clear that individually, no or
very few single android handset models sell at iPhone scale. Samsung and
others will continue to be able to fit "premium" constrained features like
OLED displays to their cheaper phones, simply because they don't have to make
as many of them.

In the case of the iPhone, I'm potentially paying the premium solely because
it's hard for Apple to scale production - a harder sell if several competing
Android handsets that are not as supply constrained can offer these things for
3 or 4 hundred dollars less. I'm willing to bet this will work out ok for
Apple in the end, but if this happens it's probably going to be a rough ride
among some journalists like we saw with the verge's myopic reporting over the
7's headphone jack removal.

I think there's another additional motivation which Gruber doesn't touch on -
as iPhone sales growth starts to cool, it's going to get harder for Apple as a
company to continue growing at its typical rate, especially when the iPhone is
responsible for ~70% of Apple's earnings. Juicing the margins on the most
expensive iPhone models could be an attractive way (for Apple shareholders
anyway...) to boost iPhone revenues in general to keep the growth train going.

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cylinder714
What could a $1200 device with 256 gigabytes of storage _do_ that another
high-end phone cannot do? You're constrained by the form factor. The only
other devices with specs like that are notebooks.

I don't really expect Apple to come out with a convergence device like the
Ubuntu phone or Windows Continuum, but I don't know what else a phone could do
to justify the price.

~~~
Someone
$1200 (plus taxes and shipping) 'buys' you
[http://www.red.com/hydrogen](http://www.red.com/hydrogen), which promises
'holographic multi-view content' without the use of glasses or headsets.

That's a product nobody can beat on features for the next six months because
nobody knows what exactly it can do, but it could be worth both the wait and
the price.

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mstolpm
Shouldn’t this submission have the original title: „Speculation Regarding the
Pricing of and Strategy Behind This Year’s New iPhones“?

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CalChris
Sounds great. Now do you have that in a 4"?

~~~
ginger123
Nobody wants a 4" phone anymore. You can't even see a couple tweets on a 4"
screen

