Well, they may have allegedly pre-sold one million within 24 hours, but they certainly won't get my $1,000+, which still sits by my desk waiting for the iPad3 and iPhone 5. I know two others who won't be upgrading on either product too, so thats another $2,000. Small sample, yes, yet representative of the population I'd say if you exclude end of contract "forced" sales.
Well, you'll find business is not that simple. Consider this, In that time I may see an Android phone I like and jump ship. That's then a 2 year lock out during which I won't return to iPhone. Further, having finished my contract by the end of this month, that means they're not taking a cut of contract revenues from me until I get back on, if I ever do. They've effectively lost a customer, along with the cost endured to acquire said customer.
It's the carrier that's been paying back the subsidy from your subscription fees under contract. Apple got their money up-front from you two years ago. Any extra revenue they earned from you was from iTunes/App Store sales, which I'm guessing will probably continue after the contract is over.
You also said you're waiting with your cash in-hand for iPhone5, so looking at competing Android phones isn't even on your radar. Tim Cook loves customers like you.
certainly won't get my $1,000+, which still sits by my desk waiting for the iPad3 and iPhone 5
Not sure how smart it is keeping cash lying around to either depreciate or get stolen, but if you're going to wait for the iPad 3 and iPhone 5, you're only going to regret it, because the iPad 4 and iPhone 6 are going to be even better.
Some will transfer to the Android camp. Some will wait it out. I suggest if the iPhone 5 had been shown many more would have taken an upgrade rather than waiting or jumping ship to Android. Hence, it's not that releasing the iPhone 4S was "bad" as such, just that iPhone 5 would have been much much better.
I'm getting the most profound headache trying to create a small instance of the magical thinking necessary to generate the comments you've made here.
I don't even know where to start.
Like, how do you think this works? They have a magical golden goose shitting out new, feature complete design verification test models and they just decided not to "show" you the next one behind the curtain?
Apple is successful because they take their time creating their hits. The 3GS didn't imperil the company and neither will this.
I actually don't mind the (I assume) 2 year cycle they've got going now, with a new phone 1 year with a follow up "S" model the next.
That way, when people are on their 2 year contract cycles, you either sit on the "new shiny" or the "advanced shiny" cycle, so consumers rarely lose out depending which cycle their contract ends in, since there are pros and cons for both.
What's worrisome is that we're probably at the end of a long stretch where the industrial design drove the sales. From here on in, at least for a while, the innovations are turning inwards. Siri. Better camera. Better power consumption.
It's not like we're launching new networks every year or two, or individual ARM cores are going to make huge leaps in performance.
Have we trained everyone to worship the new/shiny when we're probably hitting a short-term asymptote?
Isn't that a risk Apple has taken ever since the first iPhones went off-contract in 2009? People have always had the choice to be disappointed in the latest model and jump to whatever they wanted, Android or not.
It looks like Apple has done pretty well in spite of itself. You're always going to disappoint a certain % of people (like yourself).
Yeah, instead they only pre-sold one million of them in 24h.