Where to grow smartphones
Once, $ 1,000 for a phone was a psychological frontier, the roof of the world, under the roof of which only the most top gadgets gathered. Above the roof, there was simply no place to improve the performance - the territory of the jewelry and accessories had already begun there. Verification of intuitive ideas with reality was held by Apple with the price range for iPhones in 2018 (only the iPhone XR could keep itself within three-digit amounts, but the price tag for the upgraded “dozens” only stepped in there with a neat foot, marking at the turn of $ 999 - and collapsed with comfort for all $ 1,449 for XS Max 512 GB), resounding in response to the market rumbling noting the achievement of a glass ceiling. The justification for the number of available gigabytes snapped under the weight of Apple prices hung on it: a half a terabyte of memory for one and a half thousand bucks could be explained only by the pathos of "the most expensive iPhone" - in other words, Ponte. That is, a variable from the market of jewelry and accessories.
In general, a trick like 1999 for a terabyte began to look too risky even for Apple. Reports of disappointing sales attracted attention to the fact that not for the first year Apple had been increasing not the number of handsets sold, but their price. There is talk that the era of "iPhones" is ending, and smart phones, as a product, have exhausted the growth potential. Considering that the “iPhones”, in fact, the modern smartphone market has opened up - the logical transition from “Apple Overshot” to the future of smartphones looks justified.
If you look at the smartphone market from a small historical distance, you will see that it is not just very young, but not even really formed, while still in search of its price boundaries.
In a well-established market, consumers are more or less aware of the order of prices: say, cars are something in the five-digit range, from $ 10,000 to $ 99.999, and in six-figure sums, luxury is more likely than a means of transportation, but it is also in clear limits of the price limit formed niche market.
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The boundaries of any established market are more or less delineated - but not by the will of its players, but by the territory of other markets. Of which there are many - and the buyer is one.
The car market from above presses the real estate market already - every person interested in purchasing both a car and an apartment has a price threshold beyond which he no longer considers cylinders, but rooms. I think the global median of these representations somewhere around $ 100,000 will pass, but the specific position of the borders is not as important as their presence, and even more important is the principle of their formation: the position in the hierarchy of human values.
Smartphones are still outside this hierarchy. Mankind has clearly not yet decided on their value in relation to other goods. As with the fact that such a smartphone, in principle.
The evolution of smartphones began as a continuation of the evolution of phones. In the 90s, telephones broke off the wires - and became mobile. In the zero mobile phones smarter - and became known as smartphones.
In the process, smartphones destroyed entire classes and types of individual devices like migrants - buffalo, devastating once rich ecosystems, not excluding internal cannibalism: iPod-hungled iPod pieces went to the Apple Watch - and in general modern smarts are sewn from fragments of their victims like Jeepers- Creepers. But, while it was happening within the same price and size category, there was nothing unusual in this consolidation.
In the tenths, smartphones ceased to be telephones - at least to a greater extent than they were cameras, for example: when was the last time you paid attention to GSM or even LTE bands in the specifications of your device? And the number of megapixels, the presence of HDR, the number of cameras from all sides and the geometric shape that their combination will take still excite the imagination of users and market expectations. Because users continue to take pictures - and they want to and continue to do, and shoot video. But no one buys smartphones to make calls. The relative importance of the phone functionality and gave way to the game, and even boring calendar with reminders.
The last time I had to remember about voice calls was the FaceTime feature with the microphone turned on when an incoming call was made without notifying the user. I jerked to check the settings - and immediately calmed down: FaceTime was turned off last year.
But over the past 3 years, smarts have quietly opened their mouths on what seemed to be the next step in the hierarchy: electronics up to $ 1,000 and up.
With the prices of the iPhone 6, Apple made a wide stride into the category available to devices with screens more, the keyboards are more convenient, the operating systems are more universal, giving rise to class stratification not only between the apple growers and everyone else, but also between the generations of apple growers.
In 2018, Apple reached the $ 1.5K mark, and the sales hit that followed showed niche limits for smartphones in the current configuration.
According to the logic of evolution, smartphones had to discard the “background” root, indicating the genealogy of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention - and becoming as much atavism as the “background” prefix in the names of modern descendants of noble families - or replace it with the defining feature of the evolutionary stage. Which is ...
The smartphone is no longer a phone, but no more. Now it's just smart: the prefix "smart" in anticipation of a new quality - the arrival of which is inevitable. Because the demand has not disappeared anywhere - and the users still, apparently, will long need this or that portable mobile personal device.
Now smarts are in the same price category with the most popular classes and models of laptops, confronting the consumer with a choice - he has one wallet.
In competition for that with the iPhone and the most expensive "Android" laptops and entered. And, as the dynamics of recent years shows, in general, laptops feel better: facing a smart choice at an average price and a laptop or just a top-end smart, users often refuse laptops without regrets.
No matter how paradoxical this situation may seem, no matter how different these types of devices and their market niches may seem - this paradox turned out to be beneficial for the consumer, forcing him to update old habits: as it turned out, not everyone needs PCs in all their full-fledged format - for Many of all truly significant functions fit in a smart (and most importantly from the fact that it did not fit, many found in gaming consoles) - and the money spent on all of this saved us from having to even think about upgrading a home PC.
The situation with the supply of technologies is completely opposite to the hopeless one: the range of options is such that the “smart? - s” market has found itself in a state similar to quantum uncertainty: there is obviously some kind of movement, but until the market goes somewhere, it’s impossible to predict where he will taxi, it will be impossible.
There is one thing in common between them: a device that someone, until now, is taken as a phone with a bunch of unnecessary functions, burst into our life, changes it - the ceiling of significance of which we have not yet groped for even in money.
Probably, at the new stage, the breakthrough feature will no longer be communication capabilities - which, of course, will not lose their significance and will continue to grow.
Just the potential of technological breakthrough accumulates, most likely, in some other area.
So, despite the harsh awakening of 2018 - the $ 1,500 limit may turn out to be extremely situational. The development of AR, VR and AI will fill the growing price tag and something more substantial than the increased screen diagonal and memory size.
This is already the price category of top computers - for example, the luxurious line of Microsoft Surface and its own MacBooks with Aimaks, which future generations of iPhones, of course, will not devour, but can bite.
Even minus the factor of some yet unknown future innovations, there is a very real potential unification of mobile and desktop operating systems, and a breakthrough in keyboardless input methods and an effective alternative to monitors for entering visual information is not a matter of probability, but of time.
The question of niche boundaries is a matter of utility limit. In the search and testing of new forms, trying hybrids and new features that extend the functionality of smarts, manufacturers inevitably reach the limits of consumer patience: “But I don’t need it here; I will better satisfy this need in another way ”- which embeds, thus, a new type of devices in the general hierarchy of its needs.
Is it possible that they will go beyond the price niche of even top-end computer equipment, going to the level when the user weighs the purchase of a conditional iPhone instead of a conditional Merc?
This does not seem to be quite an insane assumption, if you pay attention to, a kind of, head-on courses that drive the development of the auto industry, whose main long-term trend is the transition to unmanned vehicles and the gadget industry, led by Apple and its experiments from CarPlay to hypothetical unmanned Apple Car.
One of the consequences of turning a driver into a passenger will be the loss of the previously strong spirit of the brand and individuality in cars - after all, much of this was somehow projected onto the driver through the driver’s experience.
Excluding the sensation of the driver, the real opportunity for vehicles to differ will be much less - and this could mean a complete reversal of the trend in the opposite direction, when the current biodiversity of the automotive industry is replaced by unification and standardization, ultimately reducing cars to platforms for efficient and safe movement in space - like elevators, only moving horizontally.
However, this does not necessarily mean the death of car brands - and certainly does not mean the death of brands in general. They just have to look for another channel to broadcast the “unique brand spirit”, shifting the focus from the vehicle much closer to the person.
People expressing themselves now through choosing a car will only increase the demand for other means of expressing the style with which they want to be associated. Again, there is nothing incredible about this - almost all brands now produce both clothing and accessories with varying degrees of success. And smarts (even the backgrounds, even the voices, though the voices) or other gadgets will easily take over the image initiative.
In the end, if the romance of the sky conquerors of the beginning of the 20th century, who once made dead loops on their biplanes, could shrink to the “aviators” points, then why are the cars worse?
When the memory grew from 16 gigs to 32, from 32 to 64, from 64 to 128, Apple's pricing policy worked flawlessly because it was about the difference that mattered. But, starting 128 GB on a smartphone, memory becomes just enough - enough to not remember about it, for example. A half terabyte, a terabyte of memory on an iPhone is already a hangar for a bicycle. And it’s still not as scary as to manage to completely score such volumes - and, for example, to lose the phone.
In general, a trick like 1999 for a terabyte began to look too risky even for Apple. Reports of disappointing sales attracted attention to the fact that not for the first year Apple had been increasing not the number of handsets sold, but their price. There is talk that the era of "iPhones" is ending, and smart phones, as a product, have exhausted the growth potential. Considering that the “iPhones”, in fact, the modern smartphone market has opened up - the logical transition from “Apple Overshot” to the future of smartphones looks justified.
If you look at the smartphone market from a small historical distance, you will see that it is not just very young, but not even really formed, while still in search of its price boundaries.
In a well-established market, consumers are more or less aware of the order of prices: say, cars are something in the five-digit range, from $ 10,000 to $ 99.999, and in six-figure sums, luxury is more likely than a means of transportation, but it is also in clear limits of the price limit formed niche market.
')
The boundaries of any established market are more or less delineated - but not by the will of its players, but by the territory of other markets. Of which there are many - and the buyer is one.
The car market from above presses the real estate market already - every person interested in purchasing both a car and an apartment has a price threshold beyond which he no longer considers cylinders, but rooms. I think the global median of these representations somewhere around $ 100,000 will pass, but the specific position of the borders is not as important as their presence, and even more important is the principle of their formation: the position in the hierarchy of human values.
Smartphones are still outside this hierarchy. Mankind has clearly not yet decided on their value in relation to other goods. As with the fact that such a smartphone, in principle.
XXI century, zero: the birth of a smartphone
The evolution of smartphones began as a continuation of the evolution of phones. In the 90s, telephones broke off the wires - and became mobile. In the zero mobile phones smarter - and became known as smartphones.
In the process, smartphones destroyed entire classes and types of individual devices like migrants - buffalo, devastating once rich ecosystems, not excluding internal cannibalism: iPod-hungled iPod pieces went to the Apple Watch - and in general modern smarts are sewn from fragments of their victims like Jeepers- Creepers. But, while it was happening within the same price and size category, there was nothing unusual in this consolidation.
XXI century, the tenth: the heyday of smartphones
In the tenths, smartphones ceased to be telephones - at least to a greater extent than they were cameras, for example: when was the last time you paid attention to GSM or even LTE bands in the specifications of your device? And the number of megapixels, the presence of HDR, the number of cameras from all sides and the geometric shape that their combination will take still excite the imagination of users and market expectations. Because users continue to take pictures - and they want to and continue to do, and shoot video. But no one buys smartphones to make calls. The relative importance of the phone functionality and gave way to the game, and even boring calendar with reminders.
The last time I had to remember about voice calls was the FaceTime feature with the microphone turned on when an incoming call was made without notifying the user. I jerked to check the settings - and immediately calmed down: FaceTime was turned off last year.
But over the past 3 years, smarts have quietly opened their mouths on what seemed to be the next step in the hierarchy: electronics up to $ 1,000 and up.
With the prices of the iPhone 6, Apple made a wide stride into the category available to devices with screens more, the keyboards are more convenient, the operating systems are more universal, giving rise to class stratification not only between the apple growers and everyone else, but also between the generations of apple growers.
In 2018, Apple reached the $ 1.5K mark, and the sales hit that followed showed niche limits for smartphones in the current configuration.
According to the logic of evolution, smartphones had to discard the “background” root, indicating the genealogy of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention - and becoming as much atavism as the “background” prefix in the names of modern descendants of noble families - or replace it with the defining feature of the evolutionary stage. Which is ...
The smartphone is no longer a phone, but no more. Now it's just smart: the prefix "smart" in anticipation of a new quality - the arrival of which is inevitable. Because the demand has not disappeared anywhere - and the users still, apparently, will long need this or that portable mobile personal device.
XXI century, the twentieth: the next step
Now smarts are in the same price category with the most popular classes and models of laptops, confronting the consumer with a choice - he has one wallet.
In competition for that with the iPhone and the most expensive "Android" laptops and entered. And, as the dynamics of recent years shows, in general, laptops feel better: facing a smart choice at an average price and a laptop or just a top-end smart, users often refuse laptops without regrets.
No matter how paradoxical this situation may seem, no matter how different these types of devices and their market niches may seem - this paradox turned out to be beneficial for the consumer, forcing him to update old habits: as it turned out, not everyone needs PCs in all their full-fledged format - for Many of all truly significant functions fit in a smart (and most importantly from the fact that it did not fit, many found in gaming consoles) - and the money spent on all of this saved us from having to even think about upgrading a home PC.
The situation with the supply of technologies is completely opposite to the hopeless one: the range of options is such that the “smart? - s” market has found itself in a state similar to quantum uncertainty: there is obviously some kind of movement, but until the market goes somewhere, it’s impossible to predict where he will taxi, it will be impossible.
There is one thing in common between them: a device that someone, until now, is taken as a phone with a bunch of unnecessary functions, burst into our life, changes it - the ceiling of significance of which we have not yet groped for even in money.
Probably, at the new stage, the breakthrough feature will no longer be communication capabilities - which, of course, will not lose their significance and will continue to grow.
Just the potential of technological breakthrough accumulates, most likely, in some other area.
- This may be an augmented reality, blurring the boundaries between reality and the information space. Perhaps the development of technology this time will allow stars to converge more successfully than in the case of Google Glass.
- Or, on the contrary, virtual reality - and a gradual movement from the state of a biological creature, which only opened the door and stuck his nose into the information space, essentially information, in this space and inhabiting?
- And, perhaps, “smarts” have already fulfilled their task - and somewhere in the furious flow of data, communication, for the most part no longer between people or people and machines, but between machines and machines at deeper levels with people somewhere on the outer contour, we will meet not only with AI, but our god - in its most fundamental interpretation, as our oldest ancestors and every child to this day represented it: the one who fulfills desires - and each of us already has his own personal access to his ear.
- Perhaps, somewhere in the bends of new flexible displays, an original form factor will be found. Especially if you can combine it with previously unsuccessful attempts to oust smartphones from the niche of the most convenient mobile gadgets - for example, a wristwatch.
- Special option for something completely unexpected.
So, despite the harsh awakening of 2018 - the $ 1,500 limit may turn out to be extremely situational. The development of AR, VR and AI will fill the growing price tag and something more substantial than the increased screen diagonal and memory size.
This is already the price category of top computers - for example, the luxurious line of Microsoft Surface and its own MacBooks with Aimaks, which future generations of iPhones, of course, will not devour, but can bite.
Even minus the factor of some yet unknown future innovations, there is a very real potential unification of mobile and desktop operating systems, and a breakthrough in keyboardless input methods and an effective alternative to monitors for entering visual information is not a matter of probability, but of time.
XXI century, beyond the projected
The question of niche boundaries is a matter of utility limit. In the search and testing of new forms, trying hybrids and new features that extend the functionality of smarts, manufacturers inevitably reach the limits of consumer patience: “But I don’t need it here; I will better satisfy this need in another way ”- which embeds, thus, a new type of devices in the general hierarchy of its needs.
Is it possible that they will go beyond the price niche of even top-end computer equipment, going to the level when the user weighs the purchase of a conditional iPhone instead of a conditional Merc?
This does not seem to be quite an insane assumption, if you pay attention to, a kind of, head-on courses that drive the development of the auto industry, whose main long-term trend is the transition to unmanned vehicles and the gadget industry, led by Apple and its experiments from CarPlay to hypothetical unmanned Apple Car.
One of the consequences of turning a driver into a passenger will be the loss of the previously strong spirit of the brand and individuality in cars - after all, much of this was somehow projected onto the driver through the driver’s experience.
Excluding the sensation of the driver, the real opportunity for vehicles to differ will be much less - and this could mean a complete reversal of the trend in the opposite direction, when the current biodiversity of the automotive industry is replaced by unification and standardization, ultimately reducing cars to platforms for efficient and safe movement in space - like elevators, only moving horizontally.
However, this does not necessarily mean the death of car brands - and certainly does not mean the death of brands in general. They just have to look for another channel to broadcast the “unique brand spirit”, shifting the focus from the vehicle much closer to the person.
People expressing themselves now through choosing a car will only increase the demand for other means of expressing the style with which they want to be associated. Again, there is nothing incredible about this - almost all brands now produce both clothing and accessories with varying degrees of success. And smarts (even the backgrounds, even the voices, though the voices) or other gadgets will easily take over the image initiative.
In the end, if the romance of the sky conquerors of the beginning of the 20th century, who once made dead loops on their biplanes, could shrink to the “aviators” points, then why are the cars worse?
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/444908/
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