Does anyone have any data on how much of this is actually due to the chip crunch versus reduced demand (especially at current iPhone 13 price points)?
For business/enterprise, one effect of the pandemic WFH response has been suppressing tech refresh of cellphones at many large employers -- folks aren't traveling as much for business. I know leisure travel is getting back up to pre-pandemic times domestically in the US, but internationally it's still down overall, so maybe the average consumer use case for a new shiny iPhone is down as well? Also, annoyingly, Apple hasn't reintroduced fingerprint scanners (TouchID) to their phones like some others have, while at the same time FaceID continues not to work with face masks on. These and other anecdotes make me question whether this is cover for decreased demand, or at least decreased demand forecasts.
> Also, annoyingly, Apple hasn't reintroduced fingerprint scanners (TouchID) to their phones like some others have, while at the same time FaceID continues not to work with face masks on.
It seems that manufacturers are hesitant to include both for some reason, and in this (false?) dichotomy I would still prefer IR-based face unlock over fingerprint-based unlock. Facial recognition is admittedly inconvenient in a period of mask-wearing while in public (precisely when phone locks and efficient unlocking seem most beneficial IMO), but for all of the times when I'm not wearing a mask, I definitely much prefer it over fingerprint scanners for the invariance to hand position and environmental elements. Fingers that are either wet or overly dry seem to trip up scanners in my experience, and needing to touch the phone can be inconvenient in and of itself while cooking, wearing gloves, etc.
Except when I can unlock my iPhone 7 when it's lying down on the table away from me, by touching the home button, without the need to be facing it head-on, to be in the FaceID sensor's field of view.
I know the advantages of Faceid, but for me it's more of a step back in many ways and it's not like Apple couldn't have put the touchId sensor behind the screen like every Android phone has been doing it for the last 4 years or so.
It's absurd that the devices they make you have to sit in front of to use, the laptops and iMac have TouchID yet the devices you can use laying beside you in bed, on a table or rotated have FaceID.
Sure, I definitely agree that these situations can be problems. As a counterpoint, as in my GP comment, the devices with FaceID are also the ones at which I'm least likely to have clean and available hands. For instance, I might be cooking with hands covered in wet dough, I might be wearing gloves due to the cold, my hands might be wet from rain, or my hands might be dry due in part to winter.
How good are those under-the-display sensors from a security standpoint? If Apple had a blunder like that Samsung fingerprint reader that was fooled by a gel phone case they'd never live it down, meanwhile nobody really cares about the security level of Android phones (IIRC there are no Android phones with an actually secure face unlock, the random spot IR blaster is one reason that Apple can't get rid of the notch like Android phones can)
This is fair. I doubt most Android phone's fingerprint sensor isn't secure as iPhone. Still Apple sell iPad and MacBook with TouchID so they can implement them for iPhone without degrading security.
The current iPhone SE (2nd generation, 2020) has TouchID, so there doesn't seem to be a higher threshold of biometric security required by Apple as compared to similar Android brands. There are also Android phones that still offer standard (not in-display) fingerprint sensors.
The Pixel 4 has actual IR-based facial recognition, which is why it has a top bezel. I’m indifferent between that and the notch chosen by Apple, having owned both.
Certainly. As I said, it seems like a false dichotomy perhaps dictated by cost, and Android manufacturers are also guilty of this in transitioning to fingerprints only (in-display or otherwise) on many newer models.
Both is hit and miss, but in current pandemic situation, lack of auth method without unwearing mask in new 2021 phone is a serious defeat. (Technically buying Apple Watch is an option, but wear and charge everyday for just auth?) As a asian, I argue that Apple is now enemy for publich health. It's good to have both.
It's that but it's also that their phones are only seeing incremental updates. I bought a iPhone 11 Pro Max almost 2 years ago, when the 12 came out I looked at it and decided to skip the upgrade, my 11 was almost identical. Now that the 13 is out I'm saying the same thing, skip to the next one because there aren't enough changes.
I think the "keep your phone for 2 years" is a thing of the past now. Back in the late 2000's and 2010's I remember when phones made massive leaps every year. The iPhone 3G was awesome until the 3GS came along and blew it out of the water, when the iPhone 4 came out it blew the 3GS out of the water. Back then upgrading to new devices carried some major benefits. The 3GS wasn't just "faster" than the "3G", it was very noticeably faster.
Nowdays thought, I can pick up a iPhone 13 and compare it to my iPhone 11. The 13 has better cameras, better battery life, and is more powerful. But it's not 3G -> 3GS powerful, when I picked up a 3GS for the first time I was blown away how much better it was than my 3G. When I looked at the iPhone 13 the other day I was hard pressed to find areas where it was better than my iPhone 11.
That's exactly the boat I'm in now. I really, really want an iPhone 13 mini because I'm tired of the big ass XS. But other than a more reasonably-sized phone, what do I get? Better cameras? Is that worth the $800? Is that worth giving up the nice, pricey Official Apple Leather Wallet Case(tm) for the XS that's just now getting a little worn in? I don't need a faster processor. More battery life would be nice, but not critical. As much as I try to talk myself into it, I just can't tell myself that the iPhone 13 will do $SOMETHING so much better than my current phone that it is worth upgrading.
A lot of it has to do with the points _fat_santa brings up, and the points I laid out above, but a lot of it also probably has to do with the fact that I'm kinda over phones, too.
Most phone companies take care cameras too much but not for other specs. That's why I jumped to Galaxy Z Fold3. Big screen on my pocket is drastic improvement in a decade.
Apple did introduce 'flagship' models with the iPhone X, but the same year they also had the iPhone 8 which was on the same trend line as the iPhones 4S to 7.
And to speak of the "iPhone 13" is kind of vague: you have the 13 mini 128GB at US$ 700, and the 13 Pro Max 1TB at $1600. On introduction, the 3G 16GB was $700 and the 4S 64GB was $850:
Also worth remembering that depending on how you value inflation, $700 in 2008 when the iPhone 3G launched is somewhat over $800 now.
A more interesting question to me would be how the average buyer's cellular plan has shifted over that time — people tend to focus on the phone prices but not the greater monthly service charges.
Countered with the deflation of getting more capabilities for the dollar. Even a current lower-tier iPhone is much more capable than many flagships from a few years ago—never mind things that weren't even dreamt of, like 1TB of storage.
What enterprises order the latest flagship day and date of release in bulk without even going through IT department evaluation and test? My company, blue chip finance, currently issues the SE which does have a fingerprint scanner, so they do still offer that option.
Doesn't have to be day and date of release for apple to learn that they don't want to upgrade.
Most enterprise customers have customer management teams at apple and like, so they can easily learn that company [x,y,z] may not buy full fleet upgrades (or even partial fleet) and downscale manufacturing.
I bet that chip fab costs are high right now. If apple knows they can slow production down until next spring, they may chose to do that to save money.
Without any lag at all for IT department test and certification? No, and generally if you want a flagship you get it on BYOD terms because at that level people have different preferences for form factor and features.
Anyway the long wait times for devices make it pretty obvious this is a supply issue, not a demand issue.
Totally, it certainly wouldn't have anything to do with verifying all the apps required by the business still work correctly and updating helpdesk documentation for tech illiterate user support.
All the companies I have been at allowed their employees to get the latest iPhone as a work phone when they were released. The IT department had no say in that.
At senior level you can sometimes buy it BYOD and expense it, but the market dynamics of that are the same as personal purchases and people will get whatever specific model they prefer. That's very different from enterprise IT department and fleet phone ordering, which is where the real numbers are.
I don't have numbers but while maybe in the SV bubble iPhones are given to employees en masse, the more typical pattern is people just buy their own phones and the company may reimburse some amount of monthly mobile fees.
I work at an MSP that acts "IT department" for the SME segment. We also sell phones, laptops, desktops and peripherals. Our customers always get iPhones, the seniors always gets the latest and greatest iPhone.
This is in Sweden where we're taxed about 50% (I make 50% of what my employer pays for me), this might make us give away iPhones to employees like it's nothing.
Think of this: Employment tax, 30%, income tax 30%, value added tax for goods, 25%.
My employer doesn't have to pay either of these, but if I were to buy an iPhone I'd have to pay all of it. I imagine this affects how generous our employers are giving us "tax free perks".
I had to argue the case with my boss(CEO) to get a cheaper phone since I break them quite often and felt shameful bringing the bills in for repairs.
Now that I'm changing jobs my new employer asked "what gear do you want", I could get essentially whatever I wanted. Seems like a kitted System76 laptop and a Fairphone 4, is what I'll stick with.
The reports right before the 13 was announced was that Apple had significantly increased manufacturing orders anticipating strong lost-pandemic iPhone demand. But we’re still in a pandemic. I barely need a phone given how little I leave my own house.
I’d love to think the CSAM topic is relevant to this — as I’ve paused my own Apple upgrades (had intended on getting new phones, new iPads, and new MacBooks for the whole family), but there’s been radio silence on the topic since they announced their delay on that.
That seems like it would be difficult data to gather. Reduced availability certainly can reduce demand by itself, somebody might give up if the thing isn't available after a while. I, for instance, would love to upgrade if I could get ahold of one of the things. If I still can't walk into a store and get one two months from now then I'll just wait it out another generation.
> FaceID continues not to work with face masks on
Well.... it does if you have an apple watch. I would still rather have a touch id option though.
Given the long wait times for these things I think it's pretty clear this is a supply issue, not a demand issue.
As for touch authentication, there's still the SE so at least they still have that as an option in the lineup. The thing is they begin the design outline for new iPhones from 24 to 18 months in advance of launch. Even a 2 year pandemic is a temporary issue relative to the iPhone design cycle, and any design response they might make to it would only show up towards the end of the crisis anyway.
Given the long wait times for these things I think it's pretty clear this is a supply issue, not a demand issue.
As for touch authentication, there's still the SE so at least they still have that as an option in the lineup. The thing is they begin the design outline for new iPhones from 24 to 18 months in advance of launch. Even a 2 year pandemic is a temporary issue relative to the iPhone design cycle, and any design response they might make to it would only show up towards the end of the crisis anyway.
Even if they had brought out a pandemic influenced flagship design now, which is probably the earliest point possible, for how much of that device's lifetime would mask mandates be relevant? Here in the UK mask mandates are already on the way out thanks to high vaccine uptake.
And/or maybe the word of Apple forcibly scanning your photos and lodging a complaint against yourself at the police*, did really spread through the would-be buyers. Who know what pulls demand and offer, but Apple has always aimed to have select customers among the mass market.
* Yes, I know, only with iCloud enabled, and it nags you until you enable it.
You aren’t meant to care about every single release. You just get one after x years and it becomes a big jump. Yearly releases mean that it’s never a bad time to buy. The one that comes out next year won’t obsolete the one from this year.
If you had it on 3 year cycles, the first year would be a good year to buy, the second year would be ok, and the 3rd year would be a bad time to buy. And if another OEM released something that year, everyone who wanted to buy on year three would go with them since they have the best offering of that year.
Automobiles are also on an annual cycle. Do you think most people buy/lease a new car every year--especially given that something like 11 years is the average length of time people hold onto their cars these days?
Even with trade-in incentives, the vast majority of people don't get a new phone every year.
Source? I see lots of people using older iPhones, and even amongst the rich demographic I hang around, no one cares about new iPhones since at least a few years ago.
They simply do not change in a way that affects most people’s lives.
I’m wondering, do you share this frustration with car manufacturers?
Each new car is incrementally a small upgrade, but accumulated over a few years, makes for a worthy improvement. Those incremental upgrades I don’t buy don’t make anything worse for me.
That’s not really true. Model year changes come in 3 forms: new generations which are pretty big changes and happen about every 6-7 years, facelifts which happen once per generation and are usually just aesthetic changes, and minor years where they only fix usually pretty minor issues.
It’s not a set of incremental upgrades each year that eventually get to something new. The only time things change significantly is with new generations.
The difference, I think, is that your car can still run on today's gas. The update cycle for modern electronics is planned obsolescence and therefore forces you to participate in the incremental updates. If you don't, eventually all your favorite software will stop working, especially if it is cloud connected.
It's probably worth discussing the reasoning behind a statement like this. I don't pay attention to low-end Android phones - maybe they really do this to you. But it seems really unlikely.
Do you have examples?
I know many people complain about battery degradation. But really, these phones are using about the most advanced batteries that are available in the relevant price range. They are degrading because you are using the device a lot. You really are. Are there any credible claims that batteries are degrading faster than "normal" given usage patterns?
This is a common claim but I rarely see it supported. My iPhone 6S from 2015 is fully supported by iOS 15[1]. I know plenty of people whose cars had day 1 drawbacks in the on-board software which were never fixed (or required paid upgrades in the $500+ range) — and that includes things like “the entertainment system will crash every time you connect your phone because you have more than a small number of songs / contacts” — and most people I know who own cars upgrade them more frequently than every 6 years.
Your car still runs on gas and your phone still runs on electricity.
I think this statement is overly generous to car manufacturers, who rarely provide software updates. Is that not motivated by an analogous planned obsolescence?
Do they? Anecdotally I can only think of a tiny handful of people I've known that buy the latest model every year. Most people I know used to buy every 2 years when smartphones first came out but now it seems like most people I know buy a new phone probably average 3 years or longer.
I think multiple releases per year would be even less interesting as there would be much less to look forward to. I think phones have almost approached their final form, a slab of glass. The next 'innovation' could be a really good, thin folding model without a noticeable crease.
I don't use my phone that much so I can't think of important, game-changing things I would like to see besides unrealistic battery-life expectations.
I'd love it if manufacturers could go back to try to make mobile phones smaller again, at least for those with smaller hands (like me). It's almost impossible to find a feature phone that I can use with one hand and reach everywhere with my thumb. Latest phone is a iPhone 12 Mini, but CarPlay is so horrible (and important for me) that I'm looking for a good Android phone again (Android Auto is miles ahead of CarPlay), with the same size and good performance. But it's really hard to find good ones.
Apparently the mini versions of the iPhone sold poorly enough that they won't produce a mini version of the iPhone 14, and instead will push the SE as their small sized phone.
At this point, backing Kickstarter projects is likely the only way to get a small phone made.
Same here, and now that my Sony Xperia Compact is now on life support, I will have to switch to iPhone. There is no Android phone maker left that produces something between the ultra-small Atom and what used to be called phablets.
And even Apple seems to have a hard time selling smaller phones.
Exactly. This shows the depth of the problem. Of all the suppliers, Apple probably has the most control of its supply chain.
I am curious what the situation looks like at the major Chinese manufacturers? Even though they werre probably early in buying up supplies being afraid of US sanctions.
The Chinese suppliers seem much more nimble with redesigning a product with different parts to make stuff work. Umidigi for example seems to bump model numbers almost every month on some product ranges, and the different models usually have different firmware images, suggesting they're switching components in or out.
I've seen no sign of a shortage of new phones for sale online, so it doesn't seem the shortage is hitting too hard.
They have done in the past. I’m pretty sure Apple helped fund TSMCs 5nm process in exchange for exclusive access to the process for a while.
But we don’t know which chips are in s as shortage, it could be memory chips, display controllers, battery management chips. Plenty of ICs in an iPhone to pick from, and you can’t build an iPhone without them all.
I think that would be a commercial decision? Why introduce something way better right away? I expect the M-series macs to be milked just like they milked the iPhone chips. M1, M1s, M2, M2s, etc. Small incremental changes so they can keep selling.
I Apple would introduce a radically faster M2(+much faster GPU) and >32Gb ram, with decent connectivity options, I would probably not buy another mac for 12 years again. I already use my macs a long time.
Perhaps there is a new dynamic : in the past Apple had a good negotation position because 1) the volume of their orders 2) they were willing to pay a premium as they are in the business of selling premium products.
Now everybody is willing to pay a premium as long as they can get parts.
Well, they might be able to use some of that infinite money to build a chip factory of their own. However, it would take years to become online, so the situation is likely to be resolved until that anyway. And it would be very expensive indeed, as it seems to be extremely difficult and expensive even for companies that already are in the semi business, such as Intel.
At the risk of being pedantic, your 2020 link is from April 27th, 2019 link is from January 29th, and your 2016 link is from January 6th. Only two of five - 2017/18 - are from this time of year.
Apple has not increased the prices of iPhones in 3 generations. They have removed the charger from the box, but they have also doubled the base storage size.
This will hit earnings and could spark the next recession.
Be ready for an interesting winter where people won’t be able to repair broken furnaces and will have to abandon homes. This could snowball infrastructure damage.
For business/enterprise, one effect of the pandemic WFH response has been suppressing tech refresh of cellphones at many large employers -- folks aren't traveling as much for business. I know leisure travel is getting back up to pre-pandemic times domestically in the US, but internationally it's still down overall, so maybe the average consumer use case for a new shiny iPhone is down as well? Also, annoyingly, Apple hasn't reintroduced fingerprint scanners (TouchID) to their phones like some others have, while at the same time FaceID continues not to work with face masks on. These and other anecdotes make me question whether this is cover for decreased demand, or at least decreased demand forecasts.