Posted on 01/12/2019 3:33:51 AM PST by dennisw
The iPhone is arguably the most valuable product in the world, representing the backbone of Apple Inc.'s half-trillion-dollar hardware business and undergirding its software-peddling App store. It remains the envy of consumer-product companies world-wide.
If history is any indication, though, America's favorite handheld device will someday take up residence with the digital camera, the calculator, the pager, Sony's Walkman and the Palm Pilot in a museum. Although it's hard to imagine the iPhone dying, change can sneak up rapidly on contraptions that are deeply entrenched in American culture.
Consider it was as recently as the mid-1990s when I spent an hour a day during my senior year in high school in a room full of electric typewriters learning to type. Today, I spend most of my working hours using that skill to bang away on a keyboard, but I have rarely touched an actual typewriter in 25 years.
"Over time, every franchise dies," said Nick Santhanam, McKinsey's Americas practice leader in Silicon Valley. "You can innovate on an amazing mousetrap, but if people eventually don't want a mousetrap, you're screwed."
Kodak, Polaroid and Texas Instruments are all examples from the recent past of companies that held too tightly to an old idea. Today's tech giants, ranging from Netflix (having already reinvented itself to be dependent on advertising-free streaming video) to Google parent Alphabet Inc. (counting advertising as 86% of revenue), should take note of those painful demises to avoid the same fate.
FULL ARTICLE AT SOURCE
(Excerpt) Read more at marketscreener.com ...
If you call me you best leave a message. If you’re not in my contacts I don’t answer.
“It’s easy to predict that the iPhone and current cell phones in general will be replaced by something else, if I could figure out by what and when, I’d never have to work again.”
Maybe someone will come up with a tiny chip you can just implant into your right hand....
Oh, wait....
Mom had her batteries changed a week or so ago. I noted that the staff (the worker bees, not the anointed) had hospital issued flip phones and pagers.
Not all of us. We happen to have iPhone’s but only because that’s the phones we started with. I hate the concept of paying hundreds of dollars for a phone. Ours are 3-4 generations old.
I don’t even know where an Apple store is, nor would I ever darken the door if I did. The whole pretentious idea is abhorrent to me.
An d I also cover the Apple logo on my phone with tape
There ya go!
Ha ha—is that like purposely driving a beat up old Volvo?
No, it’s refusing to drop $800 on a phone
Think you’re right about iPhone, and Androids from Samsung and Motorola. Until a disruptive / significant unmatched feature, function or price point comes along these brands and their devices will be around a while.
What I think could be changing is consumer attitude and preference for flagship level devices. This could be evident in the results of the latest Apple release. Perhaps consumers are not as willing to drop $900 or more annually and/or do not perceive sufficient incremental value to go from i8 to i9, etc. There’s great devices from top manufacturers between $3-600, perhaps consumers are also starting to more closely weigh these devices to flagships also.
The one I have now is a iPhone 6. I got it a couple years ago used for about $200, maybe less.
Our son got a newer one a while back and gave his to my wife. She barely uses it so it doesn’t matter.
She and my daughter compete to see who can use less data.
Love my G Shocks. Both are solar waveceptors which means they keep perfect time.
I’ve had Apple products for nearly 20 years.
Never been to a “Geniius” bar.
With ior without a device, you are already being tracked virtually everywhere you go. Look up and smile for the surveillance camera. Pay in cash? Doesn’t matter. Virtually every point of sale in America is now being recorded.
That is a good point.
Same here. If you are not in my address book, I’m not answering.
Pagers are not making a comeback. You are being silly.
I buy my flips on ebay
What is name of hospital? I would like to check this out for myself if it is near me. My company sells HIPPA compliant products to hospitals so I see a sales opportunity here.
I don’t get the whole iPhone thing. While the iPhone might be the No. 1 seller in the USA, its worldwide market share is not even close to Samsung, which is my opinion, is a superior product in nearly every respect.
As far as iPhones go, the bloom is off the rose.
The other day a 7th grader at the school I sub at showed me his new iPhone Xr that he got for Christmas. Now I’ve known this kid for at least the last five years. Nice kid but a bit on the wild and crazy side. Who would give a 14 year-old boy a $750 phone? Just doesn’t make sense to me.
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