More Apple pwnage
 

Asher will rotate in his....I mean in Mingapulco now.

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
already an iphone price cut?

I guess it didn't sell as well as they were expecting then, eh? How so? They are on track to pass one million in sales in the next couple of weeks. It's already outselling every other smartphone (including RIM), and it is selling comparably with LG's chocolate phone, which is the top selling phone IIRC.

$400 seems like a much better price, to tell the truth. And that is for the 8GB model.

Other than that seems like they did a good job. I don't really need any of these gadgets, as I already have an 80Gb iPod and a Shuffle (which I like the best), but I can see a lot of people shelling out for the Nano.

Originally posted by Agathon
New iPods.

Shuffle remains the same.

Redesigned iPod Nano with widescreen for video capability, and apparently running a new graphical OS with Coverflow. $150-200 depending on capacity.

Larger capacity iPod "Classic" with new UI as well. Complete metal sheathing.

iPod Touch: like an iPhone without a phone (photos, contacts, etc.). Complete multitouch interface. WiFi with WWW browser and one click access to Youtube. WiFi iTunes store (also now on iPhone).

iPhone price cut by $200. Now costs $399.

Where's your Zune now, biatch? iPhone is still very expensive. It is kind of crappy, honestly.

The early price cut on iPhone was predicted all the way back in January in an article on consumeraffairs.com .
There's a similar story (again, from Jan 07) on ZDnet.com .

Basically, the story states that Apple would harvest the buzz-generated sales early, reaping their standard high margin on hardware costs (as is typical throughout their product line). But wih so many comparably-featured music phones coming out in the near future, Apple's plan called for a more competitive price strategy to assure long-term success.

The price cut is on the 8GB version. The 4GB version is now discontinued.

It does seem like a move guarantee to anger a lot of the early adopters. Apparently, that's literally the price you pay ($200) for being first on your block to have the new toy.

Originally posted by Agathon


How so? They are on track to pass one million in sales in the next couple of weeks. It's already outselling every other smartphone (including RIM), and it is selling comparably with LG's chocolate phone, which is the top selling phone IIRC.
LG sells a LOT of different phones, including the one in my pocket now, as well as the chocolate phone (which we looked at). I dont to what extent they have fixed costs spread among their different lines. Similarly Nokia and Motorola have several lines.

Apple has one phone. It may well be that their sales targets involved doing FAR better than any other single phone.

Cutting their prices this soon does seem odd if all is going well. Though I dont follow this industry that closely.

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Oh lord give me strength from this kind of thread http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...es/stunned.gif Actually....

======> Tech Forum

How is WiFi iTunes a good thing? It's still iTunes.

Originally posted by lord of the mark

Cutting their prices this soon does seem odd if all is going well. Though I dont follow this industry that closely. There's a simpler explanation.

They could not offer the new touchscreen iPod for $500 because hardly anyone would buy it. If they offered it for $3-400, it would cannibalize sales of the 8GB iPhone, which is the most popular model.

They haven't really cut their iPhone revenues by a third, since they get a pretty hefty kickback from AT&T for every activated iPhone. I'm guessing that this is likely in the hundreds of dollars, since the contract is quite long and profitable for AT&T.

Still, it's a big kick in the teeth for the Zune, which is still just a rebranded Toshiba Gigabeat. Reading around Zune fansites is amusing today.

The old ipod nanos looked way, way better.

Aga, your last statement was, well, a bit into the blatantly absurd (without commenting on the other parts of your post).

There will always be a substantial demand for low feature phones for the far majority of people who don't want the features, but instead want a simple phone that *makes phone calls* with the fewest possible button pushes... they just don't buy that many phones because they keep the same phone for quite a few years http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...lies/smile.gif

Agathon, Oh crap I read the first one wrong time and time again and was thinking what the hell... as in the US is far ahead of the most developed places when it comes to networks.

You're right, I don't know the state of which you have to be in, except that for some reason it's lagging. I don't know the reasons for the lagging, it is quite weird though. Why is this? Is it a question of lack of investors or .. or some kind of power play by the current big service provides not willing to invest and kind of making everyone else lag behind as well and demolishing their competition who would be willing to advance... but you're right. I don't know the reason for it though.

"Didn't you hear the recent news? It's beating all the others. They've already sold nearly a million of them in the US."

In the US, yes. In the world, nope, and a million units sold is not a lot globally for a brand to be sold. Here's some figures that will put this all into perspective, I just checked out the leader of the global competition, and its market share is 38% so .. a lot is sold outside their shares as well (so this is Nokia).

2007 Q1, units sold: 91.1 million.
2007 Q2, units sold: 100.8 million.

So that's almost 200 million units this year alone, and as you can see, it's always going up. Of course this is global figures.

So... 1 million units is not that much. It isn't even selling if we look at one model, it isn't even outselling it's competitors globally, of course it's still a US release so that's not an indicator, however, it is an indicator in the sense that the US market is not the most potential and basically where you need to focus, if you want to be in the business is Asia, Europe, ME and India/Africa.

So... I wouldn't talk about pwange just yet.

"Where it has not yet been released. I have no idea whether the phones for those areas will be 3G or not"

It is not a 3G phone, you can't make it a 3G phone by flashing it or changing one component. It's not a 3G phone, thus it won't be a 3G phone when it hits these markets.

"whether Apple will try to push people to WiFi, which is faster and better."

Not necessarily. These are two different things, WiFi and 3G. I need coverage for WiFi if I need to use it, so it there is none, I'll have to use 3G. Also, I'd like to see the WiFi spots that are faster in real life at this moment, I mean they can be if you find one, but most likely it isn't so. This isn't the trade off you want to make, you want to implement BOTH, which most manufacturers have been doing already for quite a while.

"The iPhone has made all other phones obsolete. In five years time you won't be able to buy a decent phone without a multitouch interface. Whatever its other problems, the iPhone is a revolutionary device."

Revolutioary how? It didn't bring a single feature that would be new or even current. It's behind, technology wise, it is simply inferior at the moment. It's far behind.

There have been touch screen phones for a long ass time as well. Big players don't like them, because there's a usability problem with them that is multifold. Smudging it, the difficulties of using certain feats like texting, usually the need of stylus if you really want ot actually use it, the phone becomes two hander by default, no button feel etc etc etc. Sure it looks nice, but it's been abandoned as the "best possible feat" a long time ago by many. So no. It's nothing new.

Originally posted by Pekka
Agathon, Oh crap I read the first one wrong time and time again and was thinking what the hell... as in the US is far ahead of the most developed places when it comes to networks.

You're right, I don't know the state of which you have to be in, except that for some reason it's lagging. I don't know the reasons for the lagging, it is quite weird though. Why is this? Is it a question of lack of investors or .. or some kind of power play by the current big service provides not willing to invest and kind of making everyone else lag behind as well and demolishing their competition who would be willing to advance... but you're right. I don't know the reason for it though. It's called "capitalism". http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.gif

In the US, yes. In the world, nope, and a million units sold is not a lot globally for a brand to be sold. Here's some figures that will put this all into perspective, I just checked out the leader of the global competition, and its market share is 38% so .. a lot is sold outside their shares as well (so this is Nokia). Considering that it isn't being offered for sale outside the US, that's rather unfair.

So... I wouldn't talk about pwange just yet. I don't believe I've ever talked about "pwange". http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.gif

It is not a 3G phone, you can't make it a 3G phone by flashing it or changing one component. It's not a 3G phone, thus it won't be a 3G phone when it hits these markets. If the same model is offered for sale, it won't be. I have no idea what they are going to offer.

Not necessarily. These are two different things, WiFi and 3G. I need coverage for WiFi if I need to use it, so it there is none, I'll have to use 3G. Also, I'd like to see the WiFi spots that are faster in real life at this moment, I mean they can be if you find one, but most likely it isn't so. This isn't the trade off you want to make, you want to implement BOTH, which most manufacturers have been doing already for quite a while. 802.11g is much faster than 3G. I think what Apple, and many of us, would like to see happen is much greater Wifi coverage. Municipal wifi would be a start, but there are political difficulties with that. In any case, it is faster than 3G.

Revolutioary how? It didn't bring a single feature that would be new or even current. It's behind, technology wise, it is simply inferior at the moment. It's far behind.

There have been touch screen phones for a long ass time as well. Big players don't like them, because there's a usability problem with them that is multifold. Smudging it, the difficulties of using certain feats like texting, usually the need of stylus if you really want ot actually use it, the phone becomes two hander by default, no button feel etc etc etc. Sure it looks nice, but it's been abandoned as the "best possible feat" a long time ago by many. So no. It's nothing new. They are mere touch screens. The iPhone has a multi touch interface. It's not the same thing. The whole point of the iPhone is to get rid of the need for a stylus and to enable multitouch gestures.

You show me another phone that has a multitouch interface and a dynamically predictive touch keyboard. AFAIK there isn't one.

Every phone is going to be like this in the future. Whether or not any of those phones will be made by Apple has yet to be seen.

Agathon, oh crap, this was about IPOD!!! Ugh.. my mistake.

"
802.11g is much faster than 3G. I think what Apple, and many of us, would like to see happen is much greater Wifi coverage. Municipal wifi would be a start, but there are political difficulties with that. In any case, it is faster than 3G."

Yes, in theory it is faster. In the future it _should_ be faster in practice as well. Depends on the coverage. With 3G, you're usualyl guaranteed some certain speed, and it's usually faster than most WiFi spots that are public.

"The iPhone has a multi touch interface. It's not the same thing. The whole point of the iPhone is to get rid of the need for a stylus and to enable multitouch gestures.
"

Exactly, making it a two hander by default. Added with the problems that comes with it, plus what it means in terms of user interface problems, it's mostly been seen as "not a good idea", but more likely not a good idea yet.

So not really revolutionary. Even if this was widely adopted as the thing to do, it still doesn't make a revolutionary feat, even though it falls into "how you would use your phone", but it's simply a usability question, not what you can do with it. So not revolutionary in my books. Taking account all the lacking features, I don't think it's a ... good deal.

I never said it's Apple's trademark.

Anyway Agathon, can I PM you about something you could help me with, perhaps, with your professional knowledge? A short question.

Originally posted by Pekka
I never said it's Apple's trademark.

Anyway Agathon, can I PM you about something you could help me with, perhaps, with your professional knowledge? A short question. Sure.

You don't need permission.

Originally posted by Agathon
Where's your Zune now, biatch? That's no contest. Everyone thinks the Zune sucks.

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
New iPod Nano http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ons/icon13.gif

Why a video screen that small? Just stick to making a really tiny mp3 player that has pretty good capacity.

The iPod Classic becomes a really good deal now. The Touch is overpriced and why would anyone really want a 8GB or 16GB player when the Classic has 10 times as much capacity (and in this case the "10 times as much" is not an exaggeration in the slightest). QFT

Originally posted by Pekka
your inbox is full... Must be a bug. I emptied it the other day, and it is still emptied.

Originally posted by Whaleboy
AFAIK the new screen has the same resolution as the iPod Classic; they've just increased the screen density. Still, I'm going to take some convincing, the new Nano's look good, but fatter. Perhaps not so easy to take running with you? Its wider and shorter, but I doubt it's thicker. I'll wait till I see one in person. If the reviews are good, I think I'll get the 8GB model. I currently have a 4GB Mini, but I feel a bit cramped.

All this means is that the customers willing to pay top dollar have already bought phones. With a lower price Apple can still make more profit. Also, the stock price simply reflects a small correction in expectations.