This sounds like a good time for the masses to demand phones that last 10 to 20 years, have removable batteries this does not affect water proof ratings despite popular belief, have software defined protocols that can be upgraded or removable modules for modem and other devices 4G, 5G, 6G, 7G+ and so on.
People don't want this. They want to go their carrier, pick the phone that fits with the amount of money they think they can shell out a month all in (including the service), and then go on with the rest of their lives and forget about what phone they have for the next 5+ years.
The problem is that the masses seem unlikely to enjoy the bulk and complexity that comes with such an infinitely modular phone, and they definitely won't enjoy the higher cost. I think people sort of have this idea in their heads that manufacturers can easily make something just as cheap and usable while lasting forever and they just don't for profit reasons. But I see very little evidence that's actually the case and applying some critical thinking and engineering experience suggests Apple is probably not just holding out on us having the infinitely upgradeable iPhone of our dreams. Again I'm sure they could make one, but they realize the market is small especially at the likely price point and given other tradeoffs they'd have to make.
Not sure about that. Apple is famously hostile to the idea of independent upgrades and repairs (to the point they employ DRM in the inter-component communication), but the example of the Framework laptops proves you can have modular, performant and compact laptop.
Or ThinkPad devices - epitome of serviceability.
Not that I'm a huge fan of Framework but I think that can work.
No thanks, upgradeable is enough. I don’t want to optimize for something that happens once every… 5 years? I’m perfectly happy with my phone not exploding in 5 pieces when it falls on the ground.
This is hilarious back-solving to somehow justify the general public’s supposed need / desire for an INCREDIBLY nerdy product that you yourself certainly happen to have wanted for some time now, and certainly at least in large part for pre-existing ideological / philosophical reasons.
If this solved any cost problem in any sort of compelling way, it would’ve happened at some point in the past ~20 years, during which the price of a smartphone, even against inflation, had absolutely skyrocketed.
I just replaced my XS Max (from 2018?) and the only reason I did is an elderly relative lost hers and I gave her my old one. 5.5 years is a good run, it could have been longer.
Won't someone please think of the poor phone manufacturers?
Apple is only the ... checks charts ... richest company in the world. How will they survive with tariffs?
I like how my 15$ Casio mechanical watch is 30m water resistant yet the battery can be swapped in 2 minutes with a basic screwdriver. If only phone manufacturers can copy this crazy technology.
Because it's not water resistant anymore when the battery is swapped?
My slightly more expensive watch requires new sealing rings to retain guaranteed water resistance after opening it up. Could be a warranty thing but I wouldn't bet my watch on it ;)
OK? So it's replacing $0.30 worth of part (plus $0.05 for silicone grease probably) instead of replacing the whole watch, right?
Different phone manufacturers are different. Apple now famously changed the design of the last iPhone so it must be opened from the front (expensive screen!) rather than from the back like with the previous model - to make it even harder for the end user to seek he'll outside of apple services.
This is just an example of the intentional hostility. Make deliberate changes that harm costumer in the long run.
I would be so pissed off if I were using a phone today from 10-20 years ago…
For some small minority of people (who are overrepresented in this forum, but not in the general population), sure, they’d pull it off and be happy. But there is not mass market appeal here.
Haven’t startups and such tried to create modular, upgradable phones? And have any single one of them taken off with even 0.1% of market share?
Once you get to the 5+ year timespan you start running into xG transitions, and modularity won't realistically be enough for phones to bypass those leaps (certification alone ensures that).
You walked back OPs statement there as well. 5 years is very different than 10-20 years. I'd wager most think that phones designed to last 5 years is perfectly reasonable.
This is true. We've had all the tools we wanted: GPS, Music, Camera, Web and of course: Phone.
If the target lifespan was 10 years, we would reduce consumption by half and double the value for the end user.
I think the fact that a good chunk of people are living in their phones, makes it a hard sell but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't step up and do it for the street cred.
Well, that’s what Apple get for shutting down all their US iPhone factories, laying off all their American iPhone production workers and moving manufacturing overseas.
> Based on that prediction, the top-of-the-line iPhone 16 Pro Max model with 1TB of storage could rise from $1,599 to nearly $2,300 in the U.S., should Apple actually follow through with raising prices by 43% to offset the cost of tariffs.
That… seems fine? An iPhone 16 Pro Max with 1TB is 1,979 euro on the French Apple store, or about $2,169. Somehow the French manage?
You're currently in the "Yes everything is going to be more expensive but it won't be THAT bad" stage. How will you justify a recession when it comes? Or is that acceptable too because it also hurts the "laptop class" in addition to working class Americans?
Yes, I think America’s addiction to disposable Chinese consumer products is a bad thing and it’s good for those things to be more expensive.
I don’t know why you think “Chinese made products will become more expensive” is a dunk. Yeah, that’s the point. That was common knowledge when this stuff was being debated in the 1990s. The working class opposed free trade back then, fully understanding that the pitch for free trade was cheaper foreign made goods.
J.p. morgan predicts a 1.5% consumer price level increase this year from the tariffs. The 43% example in the article will be at the extreme high end.
Recessions affect different people differently. The stock market boomed during the Obama recovery from 2008, and during Biden, but most people didn’t feel it so much. A financial recession would be borne mostly by the laptop class.
This feels like a return to initial point. "yes, it is a recession, but it won't be THAT bad"
>A financial recession would be borne mostly by the laptop class.
This is where I think you're not living in reality. Recessions are bad for the middle and working classes. They eliminate jobs, deflate wages, and make important things unaffordable. And it really feels like it could have been avoided.
Kicking the can down the road to avoid a recession—like Obama dis with quantitative easing or Biden did with massive deficit spending—hasn’t proven to be a good idea.
'THe people will own nothing and be happy about it' used to what conservatives joked socialists/communists would bring to America for 70 years and up until last month. Now you promote it's merits. Totally not a cult.
Actually they have a Gauss bell distribution 30% cheap phones, 30% mid tier, 30% flagships. But Apple's regular phones are priced as others' flagships, >800€ per unit.
> bending the knee does not give you the benefits it once did
We’re talking about Apple. They’ve just been given carte blance to reprice their product line in America. I’m betting they walk away from this more profitable than ever.
(Their competitors are getting boned equally if not worse than they are, too.)
Will this cause people to switch to cheaper Chinese brands? Or is the Apple brand so deeply entrenched in status-conscious US American minds that they will spend that much money for a phone? ;-)
You already know the answer. It's not just the US — a midrange iPhone costs three median monthly incomes in my country, and they're massively popular: people buy them on credit and then pay out in installments for 1-3 years. It really is a cult.
Americans can be excused as it's a relatively cheap toy for them. Our people I don't understand.
The price of an iphone has remained constant over the past ~20 years. It's arguably already fairly cheap for a device that is so important for everything we do (especially considering that there is marginal benefit to upgrading every year these days and an iphone from 5 years ago still functions fine)
Just because you don’t genuine value in an iPhone over a “cheaper Chinese” (presumably Android) phone, it doesn’t mean that those that do are “status-conscious” or whatever other thinly veiled negative value judgement / insult you’re going to throw out next.
Comments like this are akin to putting a big sign around your neck that says “snarky nerd that can’t see past their own nose”.
The Precariat are sick of being required to maintain continuous connectivity and looking for an excuse to swap "smart" phones for dumb ones. This could be just the stimulus that nascent movement needs to get off the ground.
“If” is doing a lot of work there. Do you think they’ll slow down airports and port of entries to check everyone’s personal phone? Maybe if you buy 3+ to sell. But there’s congressmen who fly with guns on their carryon. Let’s tackle serious threats first.
You seem to start off arguing that it won’t happen, and you finish by arguing that you don’t think that it should happen, i.e. if you had things your way, it’d be different.
Most people aren't buying a 1TB iPhone Pro Max - which is the model described by analysts.
Realistically, Apple will eat much of the cost, but increase prices by 10-15%. Most other retailers are thinking the same.
This was noted in the Reuters article [0] this macrumors article stole content from:
> the company will have a tough time passing on more than 5% to 10% of the cost to consumers.
> "We expect Apple to hold off on any major increases on phones until this fall when its iPhone 17 is set to launch, as it is typically how it handles planned price hikes."
Doubt it. Keep a cheap upgrade option with an older and reduced BOM and then use the tariffs as an excuse to boost the top-of-the-line offering to $3k.
> would be very shocked if base model iPhones, lower specced Pro models, and the 16e would see a price increase beyond 15%
I’ll also be shocked if they take much margin hit there. All of the iPhone’s competitors are also getting tariffed, after all. And the tariffs don’t bridge the labour-cost difference, so it’s not like launching domestic production would make sense even if you could trust that these policies will stick.
I mean, if the Trump tariffs hold up, I assume the US will have to get a lot stricter on customs; you’d absolutely expect smuggling on a massive scale otherwise.
This analysis doesn't look realistic, for at least this reason: 1. Apple is making a serious margin on its hardware. Especially storage is marked up to stupid levels. 2. Apple is sitting on lots of cash.
They have the means to shift at least some of the assembly to the US (or somewhere with 10% tariff), pay the China tariff on the actual price of components, sell at the inflated value of components+assembly as usual. The tariff would impact only a smaller part of the retail cost.
The analysis is a bit wild but Apple (and all American hi-tech manufacturers if we are being honest) is in a difficult situation.
The issue is that wherever you shift production you will be significantly destabilising their trade balance with the USA. You can optimise but tariffs will probably be bad anywhere you go. Plus China hold sway on some critical part of the supply chain like minerals and it’s virtually impossible to cut them out on a short time frame.
On shoring could be a solution but the USA simply can’t fulfil the demand of its whole value chain without significant investments and who will be crazy enough to make long term investments in such a volatile environment.
> China hold sway on some critical part of the supply chain like minerals…
And industry personnel - skilled and otherwise, who are willing and able to staff the U.S.-based factories. (Which apparently will very shortly be booming.)
This sounds like a good time for the masses to demand phones that last 10 to 20 years, have removable batteries this does not affect water proof ratings despite popular belief, have software defined protocols that can be upgraded or removable modules for modem and other devices 4G, 5G, 6G, 7G+ and so on.
People don't want this. They want to go their carrier, pick the phone that fits with the amount of money they think they can shell out a month all in (including the service), and then go on with the rest of their lives and forget about what phone they have for the next 5+ years.
The problem is that the masses seem unlikely to enjoy the bulk and complexity that comes with such an infinitely modular phone, and they definitely won't enjoy the higher cost. I think people sort of have this idea in their heads that manufacturers can easily make something just as cheap and usable while lasting forever and they just don't for profit reasons. But I see very little evidence that's actually the case and applying some critical thinking and engineering experience suggests Apple is probably not just holding out on us having the infinitely upgradeable iPhone of our dreams. Again I'm sure they could make one, but they realize the market is small especially at the likely price point and given other tradeoffs they'd have to make.
Not sure about that. Apple is famously hostile to the idea of independent upgrades and repairs (to the point they employ DRM in the inter-component communication), but the example of the Framework laptops proves you can have modular, performant and compact laptop. Or ThinkPad devices - epitome of serviceability. Not that I'm a huge fan of Framework but I think that can work.
> have removable batteries
No thanks, upgradeable is enough. I don’t want to optimize for something that happens once every… 5 years? I’m perfectly happy with my phone not exploding in 5 pieces when it falls on the ground.
This is hilarious back-solving to somehow justify the general public’s supposed need / desire for an INCREDIBLY nerdy product that you yourself certainly happen to have wanted for some time now, and certainly at least in large part for pre-existing ideological / philosophical reasons.
If this solved any cost problem in any sort of compelling way, it would’ve happened at some point in the past ~20 years, during which the price of a smartphone, even against inflation, had absolutely skyrocketed.
I just replaced my XS Max (from 2018?) and the only reason I did is an elderly relative lost hers and I gave her my old one. 5.5 years is a good run, it could have been longer.
Won't someone please think of the poor phone manufacturers?
Apple is only the ... checks charts ... richest company in the world. How will they survive with tariffs?
I like how my 15$ Casio mechanical watch is 30m water resistant yet the battery can be swapped in 2 minutes with a basic screwdriver. If only phone manufacturers can copy this crazy technology.
Because it's not water resistant anymore when the battery is swapped?
My slightly more expensive watch requires new sealing rings to retain guaranteed water resistance after opening it up. Could be a warranty thing but I wouldn't bet my watch on it ;)
OK? So it's replacing $0.30 worth of part (plus $0.05 for silicone grease probably) instead of replacing the whole watch, right?
Different phone manufacturers are different. Apple now famously changed the design of the last iPhone so it must be opened from the front (expensive screen!) rather than from the back like with the previous model - to make it even harder for the end user to seek he'll outside of apple services.
This is just an example of the intentional hostility. Make deliberate changes that harm costumer in the long run.
I would be so pissed off if I were using a phone today from 10-20 years ago…
For some small minority of people (who are overrepresented in this forum, but not in the general population), sure, they’d pull it off and be happy. But there is not mass market appeal here.
Haven’t startups and such tried to create modular, upgradable phones? And have any single one of them taken off with even 0.1% of market share?
>I would be so pissed off if I were using a phone today from 10-20 years ago…
Phones today evolve at a glacial pace compared to the pace from 20 years ago. So it's a poor argument IMHO.
A flagships from 5 years ago (with a fresh battery) is just as usable today as it was when it came out. This wasn't the case 20 years ago.
Once you get to the 5+ year timespan you start running into xG transitions, and modularity won't realistically be enough for phones to bypass those leaps (certification alone ensures that).
You walked back OPs statement there as well. 5 years is very different than 10-20 years. I'd wager most think that phones designed to last 5 years is perfectly reasonable.
Big difference between 5 years ago and 20 years ago…
This is true. We've had all the tools we wanted: GPS, Music, Camera, Web and of course: Phone.
If the target lifespan was 10 years, we would reduce consumption by half and double the value for the end user.
I think the fact that a good chunk of people are living in their phones, makes it a hard sell but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't step up and do it for the street cred.
Well, that’s what Apple get for shutting down all their US iPhone factories, laying off all their American iPhone production workers and moving manufacturing overseas.
> what Apple get for shutting down all their US iPhone factories
When did these exist?
Heavy sigh.
That's the joke, sir. Or ma'am.
> Based on that prediction, the top-of-the-line iPhone 16 Pro Max model with 1TB of storage could rise from $1,599 to nearly $2,300 in the U.S., should Apple actually follow through with raising prices by 43% to offset the cost of tariffs.
That… seems fine? An iPhone 16 Pro Max with 1TB is 1,979 euro on the French Apple store, or about $2,169. Somehow the French manage?
You're currently in the "Yes everything is going to be more expensive but it won't be THAT bad" stage. How will you justify a recession when it comes? Or is that acceptable too because it also hurts the "laptop class" in addition to working class Americans?
Yes, I think America’s addiction to disposable Chinese consumer products is a bad thing and it’s good for those things to be more expensive.
I don’t know why you think “Chinese made products will become more expensive” is a dunk. Yeah, that’s the point. That was common knowledge when this stuff was being debated in the 1990s. The working class opposed free trade back then, fully understanding that the pitch for free trade was cheaper foreign made goods.
To be clear, my point is that everything will be more expensive and that a recession is objectively bad for all but maybe the richest Americans.
J.p. morgan predicts a 1.5% consumer price level increase this year from the tariffs. The 43% example in the article will be at the extreme high end.
Recessions affect different people differently. The stock market boomed during the Obama recovery from 2008, and during Biden, but most people didn’t feel it so much. A financial recession would be borne mostly by the laptop class.
This feels like a return to initial point. "yes, it is a recession, but it won't be THAT bad"
>A financial recession would be borne mostly by the laptop class.
This is where I think you're not living in reality. Recessions are bad for the middle and working classes. They eliminate jobs, deflate wages, and make important things unaffordable. And it really feels like it could have been avoided.
Kicking the can down the road to avoid a recession—like Obama dis with quantitative easing or Biden did with massive deficit spending—hasn’t proven to be a good idea.
And the French don’t generally have a friend who can grab a phone for them from Canada or Mexico.
'THe people will own nothing and be happy about it' used to what conservatives joked socialists/communists would bring to America for 70 years and up until last month. Now you promote it's merits. Totally not a cult.
Probably why Apple isn't as popular in the EU: Europeans buy Samsung, which has phones for 150€, no need to shell out 800 or 1000€.
LOL, no, Android flagships, usually more expensive than most expensive iPhones, are more popular because people like them more.
The fact 150€ phone can be purchased doesn't mean it has a majority of the market
Actually they have a Gauss bell distribution 30% cheap phones, 30% mid tier, 30% flagships. But Apple's regular phones are priced as others' flagships, >800€ per unit.
https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/europe-smartphone-market-q4...
gosh, bending the knee does not give you the benefits it once did.
> bending the knee does not give you the benefits it once did
We’re talking about Apple. They’ve just been given carte blance to reprice their product line in America. I’m betting they walk away from this more profitable than ever.
(Their competitors are getting boned equally if not worse than they are, too.)
Their shareholders don’t seem to think so.
Will this cause people to switch to cheaper Chinese brands? Or is the Apple brand so deeply entrenched in status-conscious US American minds that they will spend that much money for a phone? ;-)
There's a third possibility: people hold on to their phones longer than they did in the past. We're already seeing it, even before tariffs.
I wonder what lowering consumer confidence does to the economy? Ah well, surely it can't be that bad.
And buy cheaper models in the range.
You already know the answer. It's not just the US — a midrange iPhone costs three median monthly incomes in my country, and they're massively popular: people buy them on credit and then pay out in installments for 1-3 years. It really is a cult.
Americans can be excused as it's a relatively cheap toy for them. Our people I don't understand.
I don't have statistics but judging by advertising I'm exposed to, I'd wager a substantial portion of Americans buy their phones on credit too.
Try using an Android phone and you’ll understand.
The price of an iphone has remained constant over the past ~20 years. It's arguably already fairly cheap for a device that is so important for everything we do (especially considering that there is marginal benefit to upgrading every year these days and an iphone from 5 years ago still functions fine)
There is no alternative for Apple if you prefer iOS.
Or if you want to avoid an advertising funded and privacy invading platform.
The alternative is buying a cheap refurb.
Most definitely the latter. We are talking about an entire people conditioned to live their entire life in some type of indebtedness.
Just because you don’t genuine value in an iPhone over a “cheaper Chinese” (presumably Android) phone, it doesn’t mean that those that do are “status-conscious” or whatever other thinly veiled negative value judgement / insult you’re going to throw out next.
Comments like this are akin to putting a big sign around your neck that says “snarky nerd that can’t see past their own nose”.
The Precariat are sick of being required to maintain continuous connectivity and looking for an excuse to swap "smart" phones for dumb ones. This could be just the stimulus that nascent movement needs to get off the ground.
I wouldn't be surprised if the increased prices lead to Higher sales for apple phones
It’s cheaper to travel to Canada or Mexico than to buy it at that price.
If the US increases customs checks, and if the person is caught, that risks seizure of the phone and a fine starting at $300.
“If” is doing a lot of work there. Do you think they’ll slow down airports and port of entries to check everyone’s personal phone? Maybe if you buy 3+ to sell. But there’s congressmen who fly with guns on their carryon. Let’s tackle serious threats first.
> Let’s tackle serious threats first.
What’s your actual point or argument here?
You seem to start off arguing that it won’t happen, and you finish by arguing that you don’t think that it should happen, i.e. if you had things your way, it’d be different.
Which is it? They aren’t the same thing.
You think customs will check if you're using the same phone that you left with? What, will there be a national registry?
Most people aren't buying a 1TB iPhone Pro Max - which is the model described by analysts.
Realistically, Apple will eat much of the cost, but increase prices by 10-15%. Most other retailers are thinking the same.
This was noted in the Reuters article [0] this macrumors article stole content from:
> the company will have a tough time passing on more than 5% to 10% of the cost to consumers.
> "We expect Apple to hold off on any major increases on phones until this fall when its iPhone 17 is set to launch, as it is typically how it handles planned price hikes."
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/will-trump-tariffs-make-a...
> Realistically, Apple will eat much of the cost
No
Did you read the original Reuters report this macrumors article stole content from?
Price Elasticity is very much a thing.
Which would reduce the profit margin and then PE ratio and then market capitalisation.
Who would want that?
The alternative is severely reduced purchases, which are an even more severe hit to all the metrics mentioned.
Margins are important, but so is rate of sales. Hence the statements in the original Reuters article.
> alternative is severely reduced purchases
Doubt it. Keep a cheap upgrade option with an older and reduced BOM and then use the tariffs as an excuse to boost the top-of-the-line offering to $3k.
I agree with that, and that is most likely what will happen.
But my point is I would be very shocked if base model iPhones, lower specced Pro models, and the 16e would see a price increase beyond 15%.
At the higher tier (Pro Max, and maybe even Pro) absolutely, as those were already out of the price range of the average consumer.
> would be very shocked if base model iPhones, lower specced Pro models, and the 16e would see a price increase beyond 15%
I’ll also be shocked if they take much margin hit there. All of the iPhone’s competitors are also getting tariffed, after all. And the tariffs don’t bridge the labour-cost difference, so it’s not like launching domestic production would make sense even if you could trust that these policies will stick.
Apple consumers aren't price sensitive. If they were, they wouldn't buy Apple.
That's why Buffet sold his Apple stock: he saw this coming. Now he can buy it at a discount.
I mean, if the Trump tariffs hold up, I assume the US will have to get a lot stricter on customs; you’d absolutely expect smuggling on a massive scale otherwise.
There are already Trump NFT tokens, those could serve as tariff stamps whenever a phone crosses jurisdictions or during spot checks.
If iPhones could cost up to $2,300 why doesn't Apple charge $2,300 for an iPhone?
It seems like they are leaving a lot of money on the table! :-)
[dead]
This analysis doesn't look realistic, for at least this reason: 1. Apple is making a serious margin on its hardware. Especially storage is marked up to stupid levels. 2. Apple is sitting on lots of cash.
They have the means to shift at least some of the assembly to the US (or somewhere with 10% tariff), pay the China tariff on the actual price of components, sell at the inflated value of components+assembly as usual. The tariff would impact only a smaller part of the retail cost.
The analysis is a bit wild but Apple (and all American hi-tech manufacturers if we are being honest) is in a difficult situation.
The issue is that wherever you shift production you will be significantly destabilising their trade balance with the USA. You can optimise but tariffs will probably be bad anywhere you go. Plus China hold sway on some critical part of the supply chain like minerals and it’s virtually impossible to cut them out on a short time frame.
On shoring could be a solution but the USA simply can’t fulfil the demand of its whole value chain without significant investments and who will be crazy enough to make long term investments in such a volatile environment.
> China hold sway on some critical part of the supply chain like minerals…
And industry personnel - skilled and otherwise, who are willing and able to staff the U.S.-based factories. (Which apparently will very shortly be booming.)