[Forbes] iPhone 11 Shock: Apple's Price Change Revealed

[Alex]

JP Morgan says the bill of materials for the iPhone 11 has been reduced by between $30 and $50 and with the bill of materials for Apple’s flagship iPhone XS Max priced at only $433 that’s a lot (7-12%). JP Morgan pegs a lot of this on a reduction in memory prices, but Apple has also cancelled a major iPhone XS feature this year which will undoubtedly help iPhone 11 prices.

 

 

 

So why won’t users enjoy the savings as well? It’s political. JP Morgan says that Apple will use the reduced costs to absorb the threat of 10% tariffs being placed on Chinese electronics (the vast majority of iPhones are made in China) in the ongoing trade war between China and the United States.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonk.../#770018f27823

 

 

That would have been really cool to see a reduction in pricing, shame that it's going to paying off the new, higher tariffs that are just being forwarded to the customer.

 

 

Considering I am still on an old 2014 phone, I am still pretty excited to see what Apple can do with their latest flagship however. The white back, black front style really is nice looking.

[Andrew]

This is potentially good news for me since I'm not in the US. I was using an iPhone 6 which is now broken. I'll most likely get whatever version comes in red. I'm so bored of white, black and silver phones. What I don't like is the cameras are protruding out of a part of the phone that's protruding. But then again these are just rendered based complete guesses from people who have seen the leaks that may or may not be correct.

[ENTERPRISE]

Sounds like ultimately though little savings will be passed down to the consumer. I personally still find Apple products to be over priced.

[Andrew]

It depends on the product really. With phones these days, they really aren't if you compare them to flagship Android phones. In some cases, the flagship Android phones actually cost more. You do also have to remember that Apple doesn't have any entry-level or mid-range phones. They tried mid-range phones with the 5C but that failed quite badly. The 5C (£470) "only" sold 12.8 million units. As a comparison, the 5S (£550) sold 31.9 million units in the same amount of time.

Edited August 29, 2019 by Andrew

[ENTERPRISE]

For a tech/tweaker minded individual such as myself. I always found while some Android phones can be equal in price to an Iphone, I prefer the freedom of the OS, while Android is not perfect, I like the fact you can really go to town on customizing, flashing custom versions of Android, Root, and arguably a larger app ecosystem both from the playstore or custom sources.

 

I guess for me the ability to "play" with the device heavily influences my purchase decisions.

[gonX]

For a tech/tweaker minded individual such as myself. I always found while some Android phones can be equal in price to an Iphone, I prefer the freedom of the OS, while Android is not perfect, I like the fact you can really go to town on customizing, flashing custom versions of Android, Root, and arguably a larger app ecosystem both from the playstore or custom sources.

 

I guess for me the ability to "play" with the device heavily influences my purchase decisions.

 

I think Apple is moving in the right direction by having the developer mode for iOS. Unfortunately it breaks iTunes sync while enabled.

 

Android, or more specifically, Google has been going in the Apple direction for many years now. A lot of the Android software used to be FOSS (free and open source), but almost all the applications on a "stock" Android phone are replaced either by the OEM (e.g. Samsung a few years ago) or the proprietary software by Google themselves. The only things that seem to be staying FOSS are the ones where the license dictates it.

 

It just means that relatively speaking, an iPhone is looking more attractive because Apple is seemingly working towards making the system better for power users, while Android seems to strangle the power users. If you use a fully AOSP-based (Android Open Source Project) OS on your phone, the experience truly becomes one of 10-year old Android with the visuals of today.

 

I personally hope we see an open phone again - Android is not worthy of that title any more.

 

At least I can still have my Android phone up-to-date and rooted, and still dodge root-detection from stuff like bank apps. On an iPhone today you'd be pretty limited in the amount of apps you could realistically use in developer mode.

 

More on topic, however, the price drop is nice for everyone as it causes competition. Cheaper prices on iPhones should mean similarly specced Androids see a similar drop in price.

Edited August 29, 2019 by gonX

[ENTERPRISE]

 

I think Apple is moving in the right direction by having the developer mode for iOS. Unfortunately it breaks iTunes sync while enabled.

 

Android, or more specifically, Google has been going in the Apple direction for many years now. A lot of the Android software used to be FOSS (free and open source), but almost all the applications on a "stock" Android phone are replaced either by the OEM (e.g. Samsung a few years ago) or the proprietary software by Google themselves. The only things that seem to be staying FOSS are the ones where the license dictates it.

 

It just means that relatively speaking, an iPhone is looking more attractive because Apple is seemingly working towards making the system better for power users, while Android seems to strangle the power users. If you use a fully AOSP-based (Android Open Source Project) OS on your phone, the experience truly becomes one of 10-year old Android with the visuals of today.

 

I personally hope we see an open phone again - Android is not worthy of that title any more.

 

At least I can still have my Android phone up-to-date and rooted, and still dodge root-detection from stuff like bank apps. On an iPhone today you'd be pretty limited in the amount of apps you could realistically use in developer mode.

 

More on topic, however, the price drop is nice for everyone as it causes competition. Cheaper prices on iPhones should mean similarly specced Androids see a similar drop in price.

 

Some fair points. I actually only really use AOSP Roms as I know that is the only true ''Free'' experience when it comes to Android. Luckily so far I am also able to still hide the root from certain apps that hate it (banking apps), nothing more annoying than when you open an app and it shouts at you that you have root and then closes lol.

[gonX]

 

Some fair points. I actually only really use AOSP Roms as I know that is the only true ''Free'' experience when it comes to Android. Luckily so far I am also able to still hide the root from certain apps that hate it (banking apps), nothing more annoying than when you open an app and it shouts at you that you have root and then closes lol.

 

Interesting. When I think about AOSP in a nutshell, I think about the stock apps like Calendar and especially Keyboard being horrible. These apps are (almost) functionally the same as they were +3 years - if not more - ago, which means if you want new features you have to use Google's proprietary software.

 

I guess it is technically still AOSP to use an AOSP base and proprietary Google applications on top, but it is not the same as full-stack AOSP back in the Android 2.x days.

Arguably, for the optimal user experience today, you would have to use said proprietary apps, which I don't blame anyone doing.

 

(small disclaimer, I have not used AOSP for a couple of years because of poor compatibility with my previous Samsung phones. My current phone (Nokia 8) has almost-AOSP out of the box but uses the aforementioned proprietary Google apps as any recent Android would)