One of my favorite questions to muse about is when will be the first year where Apple does not release any new product branded as an “iPhone”.
Everything must end after all; but I get wildly different answers when I ask that question to people around me. Some think it’ll happen in <10 years as other platforms like glasses take over, others will say it’s gotta be many decades away given how much the iPhone is a cash cow for Apple and they’ll milk it as long as they can.
FWIW, the first year without a new iPod introduced was 2011, and the product line was discontinued altogether in 2022.
I think iPods are a bit different because they completely dominated the market. Being the latest drop wasn’t needed to compete with other players. This is the case with iPads now and to a lesser extent macbooks, but apple never managed the same in the smartphone market.
As long as Samsung, pixels, and potentially global attempts by Xiaomi in the near future are able to compete, they’ll need to stay current.
That was 4 years after the launch of the product that was also an iPod —namely the iPhone.
I still don’t see the iPhone’s iPhone anywhere on the horizon
I suppose a lot of people who like to try and predict the next big thing would try and guess what the precursors are. For example where would you be looking now for the equivalent of a camera OS that would end up being Android years later? That was at the tail end of the period where consumer compact cameras were a big thing (before they were bundled into phones), so it could be that there's a path of evolution from smartphones to the next big thing, but I wouldn't want to place bets especially if you're trying to judge whether there's an audience for it.
Increasingly phones are being obsoleted by software and not the hardware which is still technically capable of running n+7 yearly OS. 10 years would be a good target for software support.
Manufacturers will look to price the OS support into the product. Customers will see an overpriced phone because it has ten years of support or a cheaper one with five years support and will think "I'd rather buy a new one in five years, I need a battery replacement anyway". I'd be very curious to see how the market responds to this, but I suspect manufacturers will set prices in such a way as to lead the customer towards a predetermined choice.
The iPhone Air existing as a "prototype" for a fold-able future phone is probably the best explanation I've seen for why it even exists.
Looking back, other than the insane media coverage, when was the last spectacle really? To me the iPhone sort settled down with the iPhone 5, providing only minimal improvements in terms of actual usage since then.
I feel like it made the experience worse. Just like removing the headphone jack made things worse. Want to connect a midi keyboard to your iOS device and play some instruments on GarageBand? Do you also want to use external speakers without Bluetooth latency? Well too bad!
Reasons: > steadier revenue throughout the year, reduce strain on employees and manufacturing partners, avoid premium and budget models from cannibalizing each other’s marketing, multiple chances each year to counter new releases from competitors
Why do they keep investing into the iphone air? There’s nearly no consumer interest in an iphone thats ‘as thin as possible’.
With the capabilities they showed they have for slimming parts down I’d be much much more interested in more battery capacity and a smaller iphone, a new mini.
For the upcoming foldable. Keeping the air allows them to successively engineer the following foldable generation with lower risk and spread out the costs.
My only guess is that, if they are making more money from services, they need to sell less phones. Therefore hardware obsolescence becomes less important as a means of getting revenue.
How fun. They are essentially repeating the playbook of the 2000/2010s automotive industry: minimal true innovation, instead focusing on establishing a core foundation and subsequently differentiating their model lines solely through arbitrary feature variations. Wonder how that turned out.
Ford and the other carmakers at the time absolutely tried to build that kind of lock in. The only reason it didn’t stick is because Congress stepped in with the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Automakers wanted to force you to buy OEM parts and pay for OEM service, and the anti tying rules killed that. It wasn’t some natural property of the market. It was government regulation that kept the ecosystem open.
If phones had gotten a Magnuson Moss style intervention 10 years ago, the platform dynamics would be totally different today.
They are lagging behind the Asian companies on the actual equipment: Chinese phones have far better battery capacity, camera sensors and screens are both sourced from competitors, Mediatek has caught up to them on the SoC side of thing. People here are musing the Air might be a foldable prototype, something Asian brands have been releasing and improving for, what, five years now.
On top of that, they have been struggling on the software side of things for quite some time. Stability is so-so. AI features don't really work. Plus, they pretty much stopped delivering new features in the EU.
To me it looks like the only thing Apple has going for it is their brand image in the USA and their locked down ecosystem. Might be fine to keep revenue steady but doesn't bod well for growth.
I personally went back to Android this generation when my iPhone 13 became unusable. I doubt I will be the only one making the switch.
I don't know enough about supply chains to recognise whether what most of what you're saying is true or not, but "Mediatek has caught up to them on the SoC side of thing" is so laughably false that I seriously doubt the rest of what you say. The best MediaTek CPU is about 3/4 the speed of the best Apple one.
"I personally went back to Android this generation when my iPhone 13 became unusable." - perhaps you're letting your situation affect your bias...
That's not what the Dimensity 9500 benchmarks are saying. This SoC is in every way comparable to the A19 Pro. Apple used to have chips twice as effective as the competition. That's simply not the case anymore.
I think Apple users are in denial regarding the current state of the market. Your comment is the second one apparently unaware of where Mediatek and Qualcomm currently stand compared to Apple.
Everything must end after all; but I get wildly different answers when I ask that question to people around me. Some think it’ll happen in <10 years as other platforms like glasses take over, others will say it’s gotta be many decades away given how much the iPhone is a cash cow for Apple and they’ll milk it as long as they can.
FWIW, the first year without a new iPod introduced was 2011, and the product line was discontinued altogether in 2022.
As long as Samsung, pixels, and potentially global attempts by Xiaomi in the near future are able to compete, they’ll need to stay current.
Steve Jobs:
Will never happen while Tim Cook is CEO.
Looking back, other than the insane media coverage, when was the last spectacle really? To me the iPhone sort settled down with the iPhone 5, providing only minimal improvements in terms of actual usage since then.
With the capabilities they showed they have for slimming parts down I’d be much much more interested in more battery capacity and a smaller iphone, a new mini.
Also look at the thinness, weight of iphone 6s and compare it to air. You will be suprised.
The main paint points about foldable is a — duh — folding screen and a hinge. And neither are in air.
They'll (try to) charge the most they can to maximise the profit
If phones had gotten a Magnuson Moss style intervention 10 years ago, the platform dynamics would be totally different today.
They are lagging behind the Asian companies on the actual equipment: Chinese phones have far better battery capacity, camera sensors and screens are both sourced from competitors, Mediatek has caught up to them on the SoC side of thing. People here are musing the Air might be a foldable prototype, something Asian brands have been releasing and improving for, what, five years now.
On top of that, they have been struggling on the software side of things for quite some time. Stability is so-so. AI features don't really work. Plus, they pretty much stopped delivering new features in the EU.
To me it looks like the only thing Apple has going for it is their brand image in the USA and their locked down ecosystem. Might be fine to keep revenue steady but doesn't bod well for growth.
I personally went back to Android this generation when my iPhone 13 became unusable. I doubt I will be the only one making the switch.
"I personally went back to Android this generation when my iPhone 13 became unusable." - perhaps you're letting your situation affect your bias...
I think Apple users are in denial regarding the current state of the market. Your comment is the second one apparently unaware of where Mediatek and Qualcomm currently stand compared to Apple.