“The iPhone 6 era is just 10 days old, but for Apple it was already underway sometime last year,” Mark Rogowsky writes for Forbes. “By April 2013, company executives understood they had a strategic vulnerability. The booming smartphone market had expanded remarkably in 2012, growing from 494 million units the year before to 722 million sold. While 70% of the gains occurred in phones below $300 — a market Apple had no intention of partaking in — the rest came from phones with screens larger than the iPhone’s 4-inch display. Worse still, premium-priced phones with 4-inch screens actually was a shrinking segment, down 22 million. That Apple managed to sell more iPhones was a remarkable achievement but it meant challenges lay ahead.”
“We know these numbers from Apple’s own internal documents, made public in the patent trial with Samsung,” Rogowsky writes. “In choosing two models to fill the void, Apple is playing a clever game. It can satisfy customers who feel the need to have among the largest screens while also creating an ‘anchor’ that makes the basic iPhone 6 seem less big.”
“In choosing to create the 6 Plus, Apple made it clear the future is mainly the 4.7-inch screen,” Rogowsky writes. “With Apple, little happens by accident. The company saw the weakness in its product mix as demand shifted toward larger models, especially in the high-end segment where it plays. Arguably, it took longer to respond than it should have but in coming to market with a complete lineup, it closed nearly all of its vulnerabilities at once. The one hole still to fill appears to be in the $300-$350 range. But that, too, is a much longer conversation.”
Much more in the full article here.
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