“Starting today, Walmart has dropped prices on both the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S, with the 16 GB iPhone 5 now on sale for just $127 and the iPhone 4S coming in at $47.” I’m sure a 33% price cut right ahead of the holidays is totally normal for a product of which demand outstrips supply. Right?
Why cannot you just believe in Santa ? Fed up of rainbow puking unicorns ?
Kochise
How is it 33% when unsubsidized iPhone 5 costs like $700?
It’s not a 33% discount off the price of the 2yr contract either.
Yes, people often have trouble grasping the “subsidised price” thing.
I’ll quote respected mobile expert Tomi T. Ahonen on this:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/12/brief-notes-fr…
That might be true if after your contract, the price of your monthly service went down. If you are paying the same amount per month regardless of your contract, then that price doesn’t really factor into the equipment cost from a customer point of view.
That’s why I bought my wife’s iPhone from Virgin Mobile. Sure I had to pay the full retail price, but their cheapest plan with unlimited data is $30/month and works on all Sprint networks. The price per month makes the price difference totally worth it in the long run.
They probably build up a small inventory for them to advertise with to draw crowds to their shops. Most people won’t be able to get a cheap(er) phone, but hey maybe they’ll buy something else.
My wife too has become the ‘victim’ a couple of times of stores advertising stuff and then it turns out not every story has the product and when you find one that does they are already sold out before noon. When you interrogate the staff it turns out they only had a stock of… two.
iOS devices are the hottest Christmas gifts and shops want people in their shop, not somebody else’s.
In France, if the ads do NOT specifically specify only 2 units were available for sale (country wide or area wide) and/or the offer is NOT time limited, then the shop HAVE to get enough stock and sell them to the advertised price, unless it’s a clear mistake (say, an iPhone 5 sold for $7 or so). Consumer policy at its best, that’s one positive point to live in France.
Ralph Nader approves.
Kochise
I guess here, The Netherlands, we are less lucky.
What happens I suspect that some chain of stores can get their hands on some stock for a good price and then distributes it over a number of their stores, but not all of them. They then put out the adverts and people go to the stores, only to either find out they never had the items or they are already sold out.
We once had to visit three stores to get hold of a picture display/storage thingy and the one we got was the one from the store window, where it was on display despite them having none in stock and still they were very reluctant to sell it to us.
We have a similar law in the United States. That’s called “bait and switch advertising,” and it’s blatantly illegal.
It’s the normal way of operation for budget airlines, train tickets etc. all over the woirld. I guess legislation to prevent it wasn’t very effective.
That is why they use the four letter word
FROM
to get round these clauses. As long as they have one item at that price then they are ok to carry on with their ad campaigns.
Read the small print. An airline might say that the £5.00 return to airport that is miles from the real city is only available for one seat on a Friday at 05:00 outbound and returning that same day at 23:55.
They will also have measures to stop people buying two returns and only using one leg. That I think might be close to being illegal though.
The modern implementation can still screw you over if you don’t read the fine print, but without that law, there wouldn’t be any fine print in the first place. Partial success, I guess.
No, you just have to suffer through the experience of buying something from walmart. That’s deterent enough for some.
I know its popular to hate on walmart, but their service usually is terrible. And by ” service” I mean the amount of time it takes to find someone who can perform a standard transaction… like buying a phone.
I Actually tried to buy my GS III from them because it was a good $50 cheaper. No one was in the electronics dept. I found someone nearby and asked him why the place was abandand, he argued that it wasn’t. And refused to beleive that non one was in electronics. I invited him to look with me, but he refused insinsting that some one was at the register. I went to the front of the store to find a manager and explain the situation of my desire to purchase something from them. They went back with me to see if I was telling the truth about the ghost town. I was. Then they got on the intercom to hail someone. The person that showed up unfortunately didn’t know how to sell a phone on contract, and didn’t know anyone that did. Manager still there, I point to the nice display case with all of the phones in it and tried to explain that they were refusing to sell me something because they were unable to figure out their own systems. I did all of it in a very patient, respectful and calm manner. I never got an apology from anyone, but explained to them how commerce works and how I would now go across town to a different store to give business to another company. It was like talking to a brick wall of clueless-ness and apathy.
TBH, you have to understand that you were asking don’t make anything extra from selling you the phone, but if they mis-sold you the phone on contract that are likely to get bollocked.
What the hell is a Wallmart?
😛
Watch some Michael Moore’s documovies, you’ll know what it’s all about…
Kochse
You mean “Michaell”, I presume.
Thank you for this! 🙂 Stuck working on a Sunday and this made my day…
It’s a store that sells walls, duh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ua_oJfpQWY
If you’ve ever been to Hell, its a lot like that only with less brimstone and yellow smiling faces.
Good Lord, yes. We had to go to Walmart yesterday to pick up four items (it was on the way to our final destination) and we got in the “15 items or less” line. The family in front of us were attempting to circumvent the item restriction; each of the three women had 15 items and were paying separately, but were obviously together as they were sharing a shopping cart.
On top of that, they were attempting to haggle with the cashier over the price of every single item! We gave up after about five minutes of frustration and went to a longer, but functioning line.
I can only imagine if they were trying to get iPhones; they would probably attempt to get them for free or something.
You would make a valid point if the price cuts were being applied from the source and across the board, i.e. Apple themselves and to all resellers.
This is a nice marketing stunt from Walmart to gather as much people to its stores during Christmas sales.
Edited 2012-12-16 17:42 UTC
Apparently Walmart trying to get people into their stores means there’s no demand for the iPhone, or something.
Dream on.
If China or Hong Kong are any indication, the long lines in front of Samsung counters and the empty Apple counters might mean something about demand.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/16/apple-iphone-5-china-opening-wee…
“setting a new record with the best first weekend sales ever in China,”
Wow – 0.15% of the Chinese population bought an iphone 5! /sarc
How many of the Chinese population are little children, elderly, illiterate, poor, not in China, in prison, insane or in (undiscovered) remote areas?
Selling 2 million expensive luxury devices over a single weekend is pretty good by any standard.
There are over one million US dollar equivalent millionaires in China. There are also tens of millions more relatively affluent middle class Chinese.
The iPhone is just a mass produced mobile phone. It isn’t a luxury item.
Well, that pushes the percentage up to 6%.
Now what about those other 94%, how many have a company phone, already have a relative new smart phone, how many are going to buy an iPhone 5 soon?
Any device that can run Angry Birds is a luxury item.
If you want/need a phone a cheap one that can only make calls and sent text messages will do just fine. For the price of one iPhone you can buy cheap ones the rest of your life.
The term “luxury” implies some sort of exclusivity or prestige. Something (iPhone) that is owned by millions of teenagers isn’t exclusive. The iPhone should be considered an expensive mass produced device rather than a luxury device.
I’d say it very much depends on how rich you are. At $649 an iPhone clearly won’t break the bank for an average american, but for the average chinese that’s as expensive as if the the american had to pay $5800 for the iPhone. Paying that much for a phone – now that is a luxury item!
I think it goes beyond just the price, there is also the need. Most people don’t actually need an iPhone or any smart phone. Two toilets at home is also a form of luxury.
Luxury is also comfort. Being able to access the Internet, your email, play Angry Birds, navigation, etc… it’s things that makes live more fun, easier, but it’s not stuff we really need. You can Internet at home, ask for directions or use a map.
Most smart phones aren’t bought to make/receive calls, they are entertainment devices. It allows us to access the Internet from the couch.
Take away all smart phones and replace them for dumb phones. The world won’t end. There will be less tweeting, Facebook updates, picture taking and staring at phones in restaurants, but nobody will die.
I thought a “luxury item” in economic terms was anything that wasn’t a homogenous item and the price *isn’t* set by supply and demand. Luxury items can differentiate themselves amongst other things by brand and demand a premium. By that definition, both Samsung and Apple smart phones are clearly luxury items.
</pedant>
You can pick any demographic in China and you’ll probably get a number bigger than the population of Australia.
37 minutes ago:
Apple: Citi Cuts To Neutral; Worried On iPhone 5 Sales
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/12/17/apple-citi-cuts-t…
May be Thorn has to visit US quite often than now to know the actual reason on why Retailers like Walmart slash prices of Hot selling electronics..
Edited 2012-12-17 05:29 UTC
Supply may have caught up with demand, what a concept! And evidently is reason for a conspiracy-themed post on OS News.
Meanwhile there’s an article on The Verge about Samsung phones being wide open to malware attacks, and not a word on here from Thom. Has there ever been a problem like this for iPhone users? I didn’t think so.
That’s all we need to know.
You may have noticed we rarely – if ever – report on security issues.
I’m actually proud of that, you know. 99.9999% of those stories are nothing but fear-mongering bullshit.
Maybe you’re right because not all of these exploits make it into al apps , however it’s better to caution people than dismiss the threat. This includes the vulnerability which involved OS X a couple of days ago.
Quite a few times iPhone jailbreak was done by visiting a link in Safari – that essentially meant a root for any random website.
The yearning that some people have to see Apple stumble or fail is almost palpable.
Here is some interesting context and comparison.
Apple sold over 5 million iPhone 5 units in the weekend of its launch in the U.S. and 8 other developed markets. An estimated 2 million iPhone 5 units were sold at U.S. carriers in the first 10 days of launch or 1.0% penetration of a post-paid subscriber base of around 200 million. In a shorter time span of just 3 days, Apple sold over 2 million units at China Unicom and China Telecom, a 1.5% penetration of a 130 million 3G subscriber base. This suggests potential for subscriber penetration in China could be similar to that of developed countries despite per capita GDP that is less than 1/5 of the U.S.
As usual if you want to see a data based analysis Horace Dediu at Asymco is your man.
In this post Horace places the announced 2 million iPhone sales in a weekend in context.
http://www.asymco.com/2012/12/17/calibrating-launch-performance-for…
Amongst several interesting points Horace points out that the first weekend sales of the iPhone 5 in China exceed the first weekend sales of the iPhone 4 in it’s initial launch countries of US, France, Germany, United Kingdom and Japan.
The Apple share price has already dropped 30%. The market has spoken.
Fact. Apple has less than 15% of the new smartphone market and less than 50% of the new tablet market – and rapidly falling.
The smartphone market has expanded exponentially but the total Apple sales have barely increased.
Keep drinking the Kool Aid.
The share prices are still way above the price when Steve Jobs died. Apple sales and profits will hit a new record high this quarter and beat everybody else in the game. The market has spoken.
Market share is no longer platform share. If people buy cheap crappy phones and tablets which the OEMs make no profit on and which the end users don’t use to do anything then who cares, what impact does that have?
All the evidence from multiple sources and using numerous metrics show the same thing. Android is a worse platform than iOS by a very large margin. Metrics like web browsing, developer income, OEM and OS profits, advertising income, digital content sales, educational, government and business adoption rates, web commerce transaction rates, peripherals support, all show Android doing a lot worse than iOS.
A platform is just that, a platform upon which other things stand, and if those other things do not stand on a platform then it is not a successful platform. It seems that in general and for reasons which are not fully understood but which are very well evidenced the average Android user actually uses Android far less as a platform to do things (other than making calls and texting) compared to iOS. Android is a poorly used platform, iOS is a very well used platform. It is also clear that the average iOS user is willing to spend far more on apps and other digital content and more willing to shop online using an iOS device than the average Android user, this makes an average Android user far less important to those seeking to make money on a platform.
It is clear that even though Android (using the usual very broad definition of Android) is significantly outselling iOS the latter is not suffering from any adverse effects. The iOS commercial and value ecosystem is vastly more healthily and much larger than the Android commercial and value ecosystem. Android is not ‘winning’ because Apple is not ‘losing’. It seems that in the mobile device markets you can have a minority market share but still have the most successful platform and the most successful business.
Apple devices sales double every year.
Your post is a perfect example of the desperate yearning I was talking about. The desire for Apple to fail is so string it produces an hallucinatory state in which you actually think it is happening.
The closing part, this coming from you, is quite funny (if it weren’t also sad)…
…anyway, WRT the overall earlier worship of high prices and margins, selling to few “top” % of people – some viewed Macs like that too, and with mobiles it’ll likely again end up similar to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Classic#History
Some people just find a reason to take a piss no matter what you do. I for one have stopped caring about this dutch sourpuss a long time ago. I’ve gone back to creating real value for real people with providing them with qualitative products instead.
This dude will never learn, he’s just too damn stubborn in his singlemindedness. He rather believes his own version of the universe rather than live in reality. Let him have his public display of disgust, its his reputation he’s pouring down the gutter anyway…