hyr00 wrote:
Exactly. Cook's claims have nothing to do with tariffs, Trump, or even much with China. Apple has a product that's reaching market saturation, and Apple's strategy of selling at a high price to signal quality and status has reached its limit. China's economy has been slowing down since 2016, and given Apple's supply chain in China I'm pretty sure Cook would have been one of the first to see the slowdown. Cook's statement is all about admitting that Apple's iPhone marketing strategy has peaked and he has to warn analysts to lower their forecasts for next quarter so he can then make a surprise "Hey, we did better than we thought!" announcement that then boosts Apple's share price.Yep, slowdown at home and abroad can be at least partially blamed on pricing IMO. I was never a once a year new iPhone guy, but I was on a pretty steady 2-3 year cycle. I had the original, the 4, the 6, and now the 7+. When we purchased the 7+ it was the biggest and baddest and we upgraded to the 2nd tier storage, it cost $750. And we took advantage of a trade in deal I have not seen since that brought the out of pocket down to $150 for each phone.
If I wanted to get the second tier storage version of the biggest phone they make today, it would be $1,250, and the trade in is lousy! With the trade in they allow now my out of pocket would be $950 per phone. That is a hell of a swing from the $150 I paid last time around! There is nothing compelling enough about the new iPhone to make me want to spend $950 per phone. Also helps that Apple finally got caught slowing old phones down and seems to have stopped that process for now. So I will keep my iPhone 7+ that is now 2.5 years old for as long as I can. They have seriously overpriced themselves for now, hope that changes with the next round of phones.