This can't be repeated often enough. App Store revenue (part of Services segment) is a key growth driver and Apple will drag this out for as long as they can.
I think it's inevitable iPhone 16 prices will increase in EU starting later this year. Arguably similar to Valve's Steam Deck, iPhone prices are subsidized by the apps revenue. Apple is going to try preserve their profit margins one way or another.
Exactly what Apple now provides. Hand-reviewed apps. Trust, quality, safety, integrated in-app payments, etc.
The problem is that there's no opt-out, no one can (even try to) offer (real) alternatives, and thus it's impossible to judge the App Store's value proposition on its actual merits, and in the end consumers cannot vote with their wallets, there's no realistic way from the status quo (of Apple simply extracting economic rent) to a competitive market of stores.
Increasing prices in response to this is irrational. Prices are a function of what people are prepared to pay.
If people are prepared to pay more for an iPhone then Apple should have already increased prices, and if they are not then increasing prices will make less money.
It's a function of what people are willing to pay and what suppliers are willing to sell for. So I think the price will go up a little bit, but probably not much.
I mean, "unlocked" iPhones can be worth more money than regular ones, at least in theory. In practice, Apple can probably raise prices by 50% even if they would release the same phone just with an incremented number and people will still buy their stuff.
I’m not sure the DMA works like that. Someone correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I understand the DMA applies to Apple’s operations in the EU, not devices that are sold in the EU. If you buy a “locked” iPhone outside the EU and bring it to the EU and set it up in the EU, I believe that Apple still has to comply with the DMA for that device because all of Apple’s services are still operating in the EU. So Apple wouldn’t be able to charge a premium for “unlocked” devices.
>You don't give up the golden goose. You defend it.
Meanwhile, Android has dozens of stores and Google Play keeps the lion's share because it's built into almost every phone, has most of the apps anyway, and google's own safety assurances built-in. Google has gotten dinged but for much more insidious stuff behind the scenes, which still amounts to a few large publishers out of hundreds.
It's just paranoia at this point. Most of the market is captured, and any part Apple couldn't capture after 15 years (say, maybe premium games) is one they probably weren't every going to capture anyway. This is being worried about a crack in the brick wall while 99.999% of devs will just keep entering the front door like normal people. And most of the remaining people bypassing apple will just throw a brick at the door instead of meticulously exploit said crack.
That's a bit of an exaggeration financially. I think Apple is afraid 100% of their market cap depends on the App Store, just not so directly.
Phones are "done". Geese don't live forever.
Switching away is hard. In the not too distant future a $99 no brand phone will be equivalent to the iPhone experience for 80% of use cases, modulo the camera.
If apps are just web apps and run on whatever hardware, Apple will need to come up with something new. Maybe the goose was really named Steve.
> In the not too distant future a $99 no brand phone will be equivalent to the iPhone experience for 80% of use cases, modulo the camera
I'm not so sure, for the same reason people still buy MacBooks when cheap Windows laptops are available, and luxury cars when there is no shortage of lightly used Kias.
Laptops and cars have been around substantially longer than smartphones, but it's still very easy to see the difference between cheap and expensive. While technically yes all of them do "the same thing", people are willing to pay for premium, and I suspect (due to relative affordability if nothing else) that the market of people able and willing to pay for a nicer phone is and will remain quite large.
There's a very nice premium in execution. (And vertical integration.) For example their laptops are selling like hot cakes ... because they are seen as better made then the competition by consumers. (Sure, it seems the (premium?) laptop market finally getting some competition thanks to Framework/StarLabs/etc.)
Obviously the same is true of the iPhone. And software is a big part of it. (I don't want to deal with Dell and Windows. And Asahi is getting better day-by-day.) And hardware too. (M1, M2, M3, etc.. and the A series chips allow their devices to really shine with the big battery, etc.)
And ... while I don't like the actual UX of Apple-land, I don't like it either that Google with all their PhDs and big brain still cannot fucking solve the jankyness.
Yes, they will hopefully be forced to give up the free money rent from the walled garden, and hopefully it will encourage them to invest in being a good platform, invest in software, win/keep market share on merits instead of by decree.
That’s why I hope they compete hard in the AI-in-your-pocket space. Seems like they got the hardware talent to make that happen (software-wise I’m not so sure, but at least it sounds like they focus a bit more on that now the car project is dead). I want Apple to win by selling expensive devices, not by collecting 30% fee on minors gambling for loot boxes.
IPhone is a status symbol. Why people buy designer purses or designer clothes. Someone people will look down on you if you text messages show up green on their phone.
Also IPhone still has more revenue opportunity. AI assistant is the next one. Chat GPT has proven people are willing to spend $20 a month on AI that doesn't even hook up to your email, calendar, or files.
Maybe for some but not for everyone.
In the past you could trust that your phone works 7 years instead of 2 years by having software updates. It also is very stable on software side.
I have saved so much money by buying iPhone and using it for more than 5 years.
> Chat GPT has proven people are willing to spend $20 a month on AI that doesn't even hook up to your email, calendar, or files.
The biggest benefit for paying is the large rate limit and the best accuracy on the market. Copilot is useless with 30 responds per day.
I think if you surround yourself with children it becomes difficult to hear the adults. It's too easy to drop a hot take and then dip out of the conversation, retreating back to safety, and never develop the tools needed for critical thinking or self-reflection.
You'll never have a chance to understand how the everyday people who aren't edgy internet pals see you, or why, or what that means for your life.
I mean your statement boils down to "is it possible for evil to do good" and I think the general consensus after a few thousand years of thought is "not really".
Initially I approached this concept as "can good do evil?" but after some reflection I think we have a series of choices and what we do in the moment is the only thing that matters. Good is only good if it does good.
If you want to tie religion into the issue, ask yourself "Is it possible to do evil in the name of good?"
Maybe? I wouldn't say there was any straw man argument here honestly. More just that they misunderstand issues regarding climate change. They think that people are saying that climate change is causing deforestation, and arguing against that. That's pretty easy to confuse with what people are actually trying to raise awareness of, which is that deforestation is leading to climate change (those same plants that thrive off the additional CO2 in the atmosphere can't do so if the additional CO2 in the atmosphere is there because they're already dead before they can take it out of the atmosphere).
Yes, plants grows massively faster with higher CO2, plants has been CO2 starved for millions of years now but add it in labs and you can see plants growing more than 100% faster.
Probably the reason we see less mineral density in crops today, CO2 levels has risen so they grow faster but mineral supply is the same. So probably not very beneficial, we aren't lacking in plant calories as is.
Note: Deforestation continues at a record pace in tropical areas, which leads to less trees and plants to consume the CO2. The exact parts of the planet that should be thriving is being turned into cattle pastures.
The other big sink for CO2 is the ocean, which does not thrive on CO2. CO2 in water turns the water more acidic, which affects the base of the food chain.
There's no propaganda that suggests that plants don't thrive in CO2.
This isn't "Woke Mind Virus", it's just Corporate Pandering. Apple has a huge PR problem with their factories in China, and they've determined that it's cheaper to "Be Green" than to fix their supply chain or move manufacturing back to the US. Their moves towards being green aren't "Bad", but they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't have to create PR to paper over the things they're doing that are actually Bad.
And this is just the iceberg for the beginning of conversation.
No one cares to watch the experts presented that aren't on the "CO2 is evil" bandwagon, nor then actually spending the time to counter their many arguments of these complex issues.
I don't understand yet why no one has created a "Wikipedia" for various organizations to list and offer their counter-argument for the 1000s of different talking points, so then everyone can view them in a matrix/table format - not only for the climate issue and climate alarmism, but for other complex issues such as the Israel-Palestine "conflict".
P.S. There's no life in the ocean that grows from CO2, and that then fish et al eat?
"Through photosynthesis, phytoplankton consume carbon dioxide on a scale equivalent to forests and other land plants."
"There are a billion billion billion phytoplankton in the world's oceans—more than there are stars in the sky. Phytoplankton are hugely diverse, with likely 100 thousand different species."
"We urge all EU citizens with Apple devices to have an alternate means of accessing critical internet services like banking, to protect themselves in the event we are forced to block all Apple services EU-wide for legal non-compliance."
... then watch AAPL stock drop below NVDA ...
... and Apple come crawling back, suitably obedient.
Ironically, the iOS banking apps I use are particularly finicky about only running on customer installs without developer capabilities enabled. I very much doubt that banks would queue up to install from web sites etc.
How's that relevant? It's their second largest market for iPhone sales, representing around 25% of total units sold. If, as the parent comment suggested, the EU intervened and somehow banned Apple's services in the EU until they started complying with the law, new iPhones sales would effectively drop to 0.
If all App Store sells stopped in the EU, it would be 7% of their App Store revenue which is only part of their services revenue which is only 1/5 of their overall revenue.
EU is Apple’s third largest market. The largest market ping pongs between China and the Americans
Why do you keep talking about their app store revenue? IF the EU applied pressure on Apple by blocking their services, both app store and iPhone sales would disappear overnight. Nobody is going to buy an iPhone that doesn't work.
It is, but all regulation is market manipulation (like, literally. It forces the market equivalent away from the free market). We have decided it's ok to vest that power in governments.
When you look at the multiple on services - the App Store could easily be >40% of Apple's total market cap.
They're going to stick their fingers in their ears as long as they can to defend that.
You don't give up the golden goose. You defend it.