What I like about this problem is that it encourages Apple to continue supporting old hardware.

When you upgrade, they want that old device to stay on-the-grid.

I agree. Those older devices are still subscribing to some of your services, making them very valuable.

I admit, however, that I get a new iphone each time one is released, and I've gotten the newest watch at its release also. My macbook, on the other hand, I do plan on keeping (and not upgrading) for _hopefully_ three to five years...unless of course my wife decides she wants my Air (to replace her ipad) - then I suppose a Pro is in my near future. :D

I will bite : what's the point of upgrading at each release cycle ?

I am a mobile dev looking at my phone a lot .. and even in that case I am now changing phones every 2 to 3 years.

The ecological waste is one of my main motivations, but tbh I don't really get much from a new phone. It goes so slightly faster and that's pretty much it.

As a mobile dev for games/apps I like to have as many versions of devices as possible, newest one if possible.

However, the older phones/tablets/devices are best to start and do most of the development on, somewhat like making sure a game runs on an older PC or laptop.

If you tune your app to the lower end (older) devices, scaling up is easier than scaling down. If all you have is the latest devices it will lead to bloated apps and slow games.

Similar to how John Carmack does parallel implementations and starts with the lower end renderers in game engine design [1].

> However, some of my most effective uses of this strategy have been more aggressive. Over the years, I have done a number of hardware acceleration conversions from software rendering engines. In the old days, I would basically start from scratch, first implementing the environment rendering, then the characters, then the special effects. There were always lots of little features that got forgotten, and comparing against the original meant playing through the game on two systems at once.

> The last two times I did this, I got the software rendering code running on the new platform first, so everything could be tested out at low frame rates, then implemented the hardware accelerated version in parallel, setting things up so you could instantly switch between the two at any time. For a mobile OpenGL ES application being developed on a windows simulator, I opened a completely separate window for the accelerated view, letting me see it simultaneously with the original software implementation. This was a very significant development win.

[1] http://sevangelatos.com/john-carmack-on-parallel-implementat...

Camera upgrades are another major reason for phone upgrades. Processor bumps are nice, but the camera improvements are dramatically bigger and probably also more noticeable to your average user. To some extent the processor goes hand-in-hand with that, since Apple's new computational photography features are driven by their new processors.

I'm still running an iPhone SE, but if I were to upgrade it would be for the camera.

I held at the iPhone 7 until the XR. I didn't actually need to upgrade, but I knew I wouldn't upgrade to whatever they released this year if 5G and other nice hardware things were coming next year.

The 7 is fine. Went to my partner, could've gone to my teenager, but he's not interested in a phone.

The question I've asked myself a bunch of times in the past and which could be super relevant next year: if there's a 120hz iPad with 5G, I could absolutely live with that as my only device.

I barely want a phone these days and work hard not to pull it out. I do use it for running though (heart rate band). Easily replaced by something else, but I definitely don't want to just buy gadgets on an annual basis anymore.

> could've gone to my teenager, but he's not interested in a phone.

You’re going to have to explain this one.

He's homeschooled. He loves Minecraft and Kerbal.

But I think what did it the most is that the adults in his life are all self-employed and a bit stuck on their phones/laptops/tablets. I'm thinking this may end up skipping a generation.

The kids are going to be all right

Apple has a recycling program you might want to consider:

https://www.apple.com/recycling/nationalservices/

Don't, they'll just shred it. Sell it on Ebay and let it be harvested for spare parts.

Even if they reused the parts, the less wasteful phone is the one you already have.

I am not trying to be overly moralistic though .. just trying to understand if there is any value people see in getting a new phone each year outside of social/new and shiny.

It made a lot of sense 8 or 10 years ago where each year there was a big leap. But nowadays, even for e.g. camera, the improvements are very incremental at best (when they are not mostly algorithmic so backportable) .

You can do what you do because the old devices hold their value.

Buying last generation Apple stuff is a safe decision, so the constant upgraders get good prices when they sell their old stuff.

It’s also because spare parts are hard to come by, so Apple consumers cash in by selling their equipment as donors.

There’s nothing wrong with that as long as you sell or pass on the old device.

This isn't true... imagine half the population passing on their phones to get a new one, and the other half always getting used phones because the new ones are (say) too expensive to justify it. Versus another population where neither group gets new phones. They're quite obviously not consuming things at the same rate. And by passing it on, you're enabling people who might never cycle through phones to actually do that now. (Which is most definitely not to say that you shouldn't buy used or pass on an old device. 100% please very much do do so. You'll obviously prevent some folks from buying new, and it will obviously reduce consumption. Just don't come to the mistaken conclusion that it's equivalent to keeping your old device and not upgrading at all.)

I think you're wrong about this. The incentives are much better environmentally for a cascade of third party purchases, it creates an incentive for you to look after the phone, and to buy a phone which is robust, the manufacturer is incentivized to produce something long lasting, because otherwise the depreciation is too high for the consumer to justify buying it. The phone carries enough value so that it's worth repairing, even when it's 3-4 years old.

Cheap Android phones aren't worth repairing, people are validated to beat them up, their security updates run out within 1.5-2.5 years. Most iPhones are likely still to be on the market and being used after 4 years or more. If you buy an iPhone and sell it on you're clearly displacing another phone from being bought, which almost certainly would have a shorter lifetime before being scrapped.

If I understand correctly you're saying that people take better care of their phones because they want to be able to sell their old ones when they upgrade? Whereas presumably people who were just going to keep the old phone wouldn't look after it as well and would then break/damage it sooner?

I'm sure some fraction of people probably do what you day, but as far as I know, it is known that this is the exact opposite of what happens for a lot of other people (even iPhone users): they in fact tend to be more careless and break them more easily because they want to upgrade. [1]

Anecdotally, on a somewhat related tangent, I have found it curious that whenever I see a phone with a broken screen, it almost always tends to be an iPhone. I have no idea why this is, and I doubt it necessarily has to do with the above effect, but it does make me skeptical of the idea that people take better care of their iPhones because they presumably want to sell it later.

I'm also skeptical that most people go through the trouble of selling their old phones at all, even iPhones. Far, far more people seem to have iPhones than bother to try to sell their old ones, so I would guess a lot of people just do nothing with their old iPhone. Or trade it in. It's not exactly painless for everyone to sell their old iPhones.

Moreover, incentive-wise, like every phone company, Apple has every incentive to make everyone upgrade. Despite the continued support for old devices, you can imagine they pour a lot of time and money into making sure this happens, and judging from how well they've done, I'm not under the impression they've had massive failures on this front.

So I mean, it doesn't seem impossible that what you're saying could happen, and I'm sure it does for some subset of the population, but every evidence I've seen suggests it's far smaller an effect than would be necessary to compensate.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-people-want-u...

Apple just released an update for phones going back to the 4s which was released in 2011.

In addition, the Apple Watch still isn't viable to own without also owning an iPhone, and the AirPods are significantly less useful without an iOS device.

Clearly taking steps in that direction with watchOS 6 though. On-device app store, and the activity app lets you look at workout info and awards instead of forcing you to go to the iPhone app.

On the face of it, that makes me wonder if they're aiming to expand it to Android users. But I suspect they'd need a real Android integrated app if they want to compete in that space.

> Headline is misleading at best, if the iPhone were to suddenly lose their market to Android phones, most of that subscription revenue would dry up too.

I think the title implies "iphone sales" and not the iphone as a device..

Very true. It is also important to point out that the latest is innovations from Apple on mobile phones were alienating a non-trivial percentage of their customer base.

If that were the case, you should be able to see it in surveys showing iPhone users switching to Android en masse.

Matters on the definition of en masse. As anecdotal evidence many of my friends hold an older version of iPhone and refuse to purchase a newer model. I think 6s is the peak of mobile phones and for me there is nothing new that Apple could add. If they were keep producing 6s with better CPU or more memory over time I would keep purchasing that phone. Since they degraded the UX for me in the newer iPhones I won't buy it any more.

There is no definition of “en masse” based on “anecdotal evidence”.

All of the evidence from Apples financial statements when the X was introduced is that people did upgrade.

But to your point, the iPhone 6s was when phones got good “enough”, it is still fast and the only reason I upgraded to the 8 plus was for the larger battery and screen.

>Headline is misleading at best, if the iPhone were to suddenly lose their market to Android phones

10 years into the iPhone, it's safe to say this is never going to happen.

Hmmm..., I remember the Macintosh’s slow death to the PC in the late 1980’s and 1990s.

I think you should probably look more closely at the iPhone’s global market share.

Developers will support the larger, more profitable markets first. At some point, they’ll stop supporting the shrinking market.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/31/iphones-global-ma...

Now look at the revenue per device that is generated for developers.

https://themanifest.com/app-development/android-vs-ios-which...

Not only is it easier to build and maintain apps for iOS, people spend a lot more money on that platform. That Android market share is, in large part, driven by developing nations that aren't going to spend a lot of money on buying software on their mobile devices.

That could certainly change in the future, but I just want to illustrate why just talking about the number of devices might not be the best indicator for which platform you should develop applications.

That was as the market was growing. Once it saturated (late 90s?), Apple's held a fairly small, but also reasonably constant proportion IIRC.

We're seeing the same thing happen in phones; the developed world's market is saturated now and the rate of turnover is slowing, and Apple doesn't have pricing that competes in the developing world.

The point I'd disagree with in your comment is that you say "larger, more profitable" when those two don't necessarily go together. Samsung and Chinese vendors are not making more profit than Apple anytime soon.

Declining sales != declining install market share

The problem is No Newspaper actually write the word Declining Sales, they all use the word marketshares, where it means unit / revenue in the total market during a period of time.

As a matter of fact Tim Cook mentioned in the Investor Q&A that iPhone User base has been growing in all of their Operating Segment. ( The word Operation was chosen likely because Apple doesn't actually operate in India, where it has declining usage ). The last reported Active iPhone users were 900M nearly 10 months ago. Apple are highly likely to reach 1B Active iPhone user sometime in 2020.

Developers will support multiple markets, the same way that car companies deliver cars with the steering wheel on the wrong (i.e. right) side of the car for those comparably small markets.

I guess I wasn’t clear on this point.

“At some point, they’ll stop supporting the shrinking market.”

If the market is profitable, they’ll support it. However, as the Macintosh market shrank in the 1990s, for example, some developers fled.

Also, great iPhone only apps will try to capture part of the larger Android market. As more revenue comes from Android, that’ll be their primary market.

Read this story about Steve Jobs and Adobe. It might give you a better idea about what I’m trying to convey:

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-reason-steve-jobs-w...

The biggest threat right now is prices. There are pretty good Android devices available for cheap (Pixel 3a, Nokia 2.2, etc). Not so much with iPhones.

Rumor is they're dropping 3D Touch in 2019 models, and 2020 might see a screen size reduction on the smaller "X"-sized phone. So it's hopefully something they're working on.

I'm sure they'll still be priced as premium devices and not competing directly against phones that cheap, but if they weren't 5x as expensive it would certainly help.

The iPhone has been the most expensive, premium product since the day it was launched (see the incredulous Balmer video about the $599 subsidized price). It was also the primary engine that drove Apple to being one of the richest companies on earth, ever. For years people have said it was doomed to failure because it was overpriced, but here we are, with an iPhone that is more expensive than ever, probably even adjusted for inflation.

Apple has done a fairly good job of offering devices across the pricing spectrum. Their strategy has largely been to bump last years phone down a notch when the new models come out. You can buy a brand new iPhone 7 for $299. Budget Android phones can go lower, where Apple competes by selling refurbished phones.

Depends what you mean by budget, I bought a Nokia 6.1 last summer, it's decently fast, Android One is excellent, the screen is great and for a smartphone it's built like a battleship (milled alumnium billet) I think I paid £169 for it.

I mean my partners new iphone has a phenomenal screen but not different enough to cover 600 quid difference in price phenomenal.

You completely ignored the prices I mentioned in my comment and compared a low-end Nokia to a mid-range iPhone. Pretty much all iPhones use the same LCD's up and down the price spectrum, save for the OLED models at the very top.

Go compare that Nokia to an iPhone 6S if you want an apples to apples comparison.

That they do and equally they also have a longer support life for their phones, allowing them to do this. Makes total sense marketing and cost wise by doing this unlike others who just move on year after year and artificially obsolete those products earlier within 2 years in most cases.

Be interesting to see a price comparison based upon total expected lifetime and usability of a product and by that, once support/updates and with that, security updates stop. That product is dead beyond some fanbase support. So for the base consumer market that's 99.9% of the end-users, this means there investment can last longer. Which is another factor in why the second hand price of Apple phones is much more stable and depreciate in value more gradually than Android alternatives.

THough there is also only so much tech you can cram into a phone and whilst the basic level of tech has risen and risen, it is worth noting that the mid-range android offerings are tech-wise, pretty darn good. Not saying we have reached peak tech or some form of leveling of, just yet. But the leaps - year upon year in the top end are smaller and smaller. Eventually we will get to the stage in which battery life becomes the factor again, after 2g phones leveled, that is what happened. Be case for smartphones and in some ranges, already starting to happen and an area of importance that will become more and more the main selling point in flagships, maybe not this year, but certainly soon.

Actually I got a new (not a return) 128GB iPhone XR for $349. They had these on absolute fire sale recently via the carriers if you jumped through a few hoops.

There's been cheaper alternatives to the iPhone since it first launched. It just doesn't matter.

When you start reaching 1k USD it does.

iPhone went from world domination to 15% global market share.

According to recent numbers (posted on HN 1-2 weeks ago) 20% last gen iPhone users now have a Samsung.

(Disclaimer: maybe I am misreading those stats, sounds like a too large drop to be correct)

Cheaper iPhones will open up markets that didn’t exist before, both to consumers and 3rd party buyers (corps and telecoms).

Nokia, Ericson, Blackberry...

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” — Ferris

Absolutely will happen, not suddenly but ....

Downvoted because 10 years isn't that long but never is.