Why does the iphone not sell more than androids in the Western world?

[openwheel]

No premiums, there is no handset protection/insurance with this. You can have it, but that would cost more (I don't remember how much).

Lease length is 18 months, and it's $27 per month, but you get a $7 credit each month, so the actual cost is $20.

To get the rate of $20/month? Did you have to turn in your old phone?

 

[Red Storm]

To get the rate of $20/month? Did you have to turn in your old phone?

No phone turn in. There is a current promo for turning in a phone which lowers the rate. If I turn in a 5S the lease amount changes to $10/month, which means they are basically giving you $180 for the 5S, which is less than what I'd get by selling it myself.

 

[openwheel]

Okay so the new Jump on Demand seems to be a much better deal than the regular Jump. This is for people illegible of upgrade, and must have the latest phone. You do save a little, but not by much.

There is one discprepancy between your description and T-Mobile website. They claim there is no upfront cost, but you had to pay $100 upfront?

Regular Jump is only good if you MUST have insurance anyway.

 

[Red Storm]

Okay so the new Jump on Demand seems to be a much better deal than the regular Jump. This is for people illegible of upgrade, and must have the latest phone. You do save a little, but not by much.

There is one discprepancy between your description and T-Mobile website. They claim there is no upfront cost, but you had to pay $100 upfront?

Regular Jump is only good if you MUST have insurance anyway.

The $100 down is for the 64GB model. The 16GB 6S requires no money down.

 

[openwheel]

So did you do Jump lease program with the intention of buying it out right at end of lease? Because leasing iPhone for $460 over 18 months just doesn't seem like a good deal as iPhones have slightly higher residual.

 

[SunnyD]

Aww, look at all the subjective points that the OP tries to argue. Aren't they cute!

 

[QueBert]

If cell phones become a monetary status symbol it's laughable. I spend more on dinner at least once a month than an iPhone costs, and I'm deliberately making this seemingly arrogant point in order to ridicule the monetary/status symbol thing. You like iPhones - great. Buy them. But try to put something more substantial forward if you want to argue that the phone itself is superior to any Android offering.

Apple products are superior for their resale value alone imho. Looking at Craigslist I'm seeing iPod Touches that are going for a lot more than an LG G2's and only slightly less than LG G3's. Not n iPhone an IPOD. I like to get a new phone every few years, so Apple's the way to go. An iPhone 5 could still command as much $$$ as some basically new Android handsets. If you plan to keep a phone for a long time it's a meh point, but with how much I like to switch up Android's a money pit.

 

[dawheat]

Apple products are superior for their resale value alone imho. Looking at Craigslist I'm seeing iPod Touches that are going for a lot more than an LG G2's and only slightly less than LG G3's. Not n iPhone an IPOD. I like to get a new phone every few years, so Apple's the way to go. An iPhone 5 could still command as much $$$ as some basically new Android handsets. If you plan to keep a phone for a long time it's a meh point, but with how much I like to switch up Android's a money pit.

I honestly think this is less and less true. I was tracking swappa for my wife's AT&T iPhone 6 64GB a couple weeks prior to the 6S shipping date and for a $750 phone, sales for mint condition were generally in the 480-490 range. A week after the 6S shipping date, it's down to the very low 400s on average for mint phones.

I sold my Note 4 on swappa a week after I got my Note 5 and it sold for $435 (also mint). Now the Note 4 probably did hold value better than other Android phones, but it's not a vast difference these days as long as you have a very popular Android phone. On the flip side, LGs go on fire sale quickly and yes, have horrible resale value.

If you stay in the mid-range these days with the Nexus 6P, Moto X Pure, etc - you'll very likely see much less $ loss as well in a year considering the starting price of these phones.

 

[openwheel]

I agree, although iDevices still command higher residual, they are not too far from Android competitors. Many Android devices command high resale values too. If a few dollars worth of resale value deters a buyer, then he/she shouldn't be buying the most expensive cellphone in the 1st place.

 

[Artdeco]

I honestly think this is less and less true. I was tracking swappa for my wife's AT&T iPhone 6 64GB a couple weeks prior to the 6S shipping date and for a $750 phone, sales for mint condition were generally in the 480-490 range. A week after the 6S shipping date, it's down to the very low 400s on average for mint phones.

I sold my Note 4 on swappa a week after I got my Note 5 and it sold for $435 (also mint). Now the Note 4 probably did hold value better than other Android phones, but it's not a vast difference these days as long as you have a very popular Android phone. On the flip side, LGs go on fire sale quickly and yes, have horrible resale value.

If you stay in the mid-range these days with the Nexus 6P, Moto X Pure, etc - you'll very likely see much less $ loss as well in a year considering the starting price of these phones.

Swappa is more android focused... you get better selling prices on eBay and craigslist for iOS devices. That being said, swappa is flipping awesome, highly recommended.

 

[dawheat]

Swappa is more android focused... you get better selling prices on eBay and craigslist for iOS devices. That being said, swappa is flipping awesome, highly recommended.

Fair, though eBay as a seller these days is a crapshoot and Craigslist can be painful and shady.

I think plenty of folks like me find it the best phone marketplace. I picked up a mint 5S 4 months ago for a family member at a screaming price on swappa.

 

[Zodiark1593]

You know, last I checked, and I may be mistaken, but Apples don't exactly grow on trees now do they?

 

[Megatomic]

Ah, the great myth: that most people choose Android because it's a more open platform.

The boring truth is that most don't consider that flexibility at all. They get the Android phone because it had the biggest screen, because it was the cheapest device that met their needs, or because that was what the store rep was told to push that day.

Besides, the only meaningful freedom coming from a device is what it lets you do in real life. I'd say an iPhone user protesting oppressive laws is eminently more free than an Android fan staying at home tinkering with the latest AOSP or CyanogenMod build. (Note: I'm not stereotyping, just showing the disjunction between real and theoretical freedom.) There are certainly things you can do on Android that might help you a bit more, but I doubt that iPhone users fighting for regime change in Tunisia were really hampered by their inability to change browser defaults.

I personally left the Apple world for Android when the 2013 Moto X (see sig) was released. Apple couldn't touch the features of the Moto X at the time and I wanted those same features. Now that I am here I am staying for a whole slew of reasons. App ecosystem, services, and cost among them.

 

[pete6032]

My phone is just a phone. I don't have any allegiance to Apple, Samsung, LG, etc. I buy what's best for me at the time, and I don't start preaching to other people about it.

 

[Commodus]

I personally left the Apple world for Android when the 2013 Moto X (see sig) was released. Apple couldn't touch the features of the Moto X at the time and I wanted those same features. Now that I am here I am staying for a whole slew of reasons. App ecosystem, services, and cost among them.

That's good and fine! I'm just irked by the ideologues who've convinced themselves that Android device buyers are freedom fighters. It's just a phone, folks... if you're concerned about civil liberties, fight real issues like discrimination and mass surveillance.

 

[Mem]

As above, £££. Lots and lots of people either don't want to or can't afford to spend the sort of money that's required to own an iPhone.

I would never buy a crappy iphone, fact is you can get better Android phone spec wise which is a lot cheaper then any iphone, which offers you nothing special apart from bigger hole in your wallet.

I'm very happy with my 64 bit Android 5.1 phone(only two weeks old and not my first Android phone either).

 

[lxskllr]

That's good and fine! I'm just irked by the ideologues who've convinced themselves that Android device buyers are freedom fighters. It's just a phone, folks... if you're concerned about civil liberties, fight real issues like discrimination and mass surveillance.

Link me to a gpl licenced program on Apple's store. I'll wait patiently...

 

[blairharrington]

One thing that I did not like about Android was how I had to run Clean Master to clean up the junk on my device and to clear up space about once a week.

The only thing I miss about Android is the notification light. I really wish Apple had a better notification system.

That said, there are a ton of pro's with the iPhone. OS updates, high resale value, a store that can help versus a carrier store that maybe can't, FaceTime & iMessage.

 

[Commodus]

Link me to a gpl licenced program on Apple's store. I'll wait patiently...

VLC. Next!

Not that this really affects my point. The argument is that meaningful freedom is what a device lets you do in the real world, not on your device, and that most users don't care about the theoretical flexibility that Android gives them.

 

[lxskllr]

VLC. Next!

Not that this really affects my point. The argument is that meaningful freedom is what a device lets you do in the real world, not on your device, and that most users don't care about the theoretical flexibility that Android gives them.

That uses the MPL for purposes of ios. Try again.

 

[Commodus]

That uses the MPL for purposes of ios. Try again.

Then I'm not sure. Point is, open source and iOS aren't completely incompatible. And how does this matter for everyday people, anyway? The GPL is not a magic wand that makes everything better, and most people have no reason to care that it's in use.

As I like to illustrate: if Richard Stallman were present in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, he wouldn't notice the people outside his window using "evil" closed-source devices and social networks to secure real freedoms -- he'd be too busy petitioning everyone to adopt FOSS. Open source does have real benefits for flexibility and security, but it's important to keep the value in perspective. It's merely the means to an end, and it's not the only means, either.

Apple's frequently closed-source content isn't why its market share only goes so far. It's because Apple is just one vendor using a vertically integrated model, competing against a company that licenses out its operating system at virtually no cost. If Microsoft under Ballmer had understood mobile and either preempted the iPhone or taken it seriously, you'd probably have seen lots of closed-source Windows phones... they might have even been dominant.

 

[Aristotelian]

You can't objectively measure subjective experiences. And subjective experiences are the most important part of buying new products.

I know that subjective experiences cannot be measured objectively (though some things that people believe are subjective are, in fact, objective).

For example:

Apple products are superior for their resale value alone imho. Looking at Craigslist I'm seeing iPod Touches that are going for a lot more than an LG G2's and only slightly less than LG G3's. Not n iPhone an IPOD. I like to get a new phone every few years, so Apple's the way to go. An iPhone 5 could still command as much $$$ as some basically new Android handsets. If you plan to keep a phone for a long time it's a meh point, but with how much I like to switch up Android's a money pit.

This is completely subjective, because it's not a necessarily transferrable experience. Even if the resale price of Apple products was better, it does not make the product itself better. It makes someone like QueBert more likely to buy the product. I don't buy cell phones with a forward looking attitude towards resale. I think many more people actually care about how often they have to charge their phone.

What I am trying to say, in response to the OP's request, is that there are enough people out there that are not fooled by attempts within the crowd to push the marketing image beyond its reasonable limit. The battery life in the iPhone 6 made it an unsuitable purchase for me - I mean, posts in this thread went as far enough as to argue that in certain work environments everyone needs a usb battery pack in their phone. Not in my environment, and yet iPhone 6 users still need one.

In short - they are not the superior product they are made out to be. I'd pay 3000 USD for a phone if I was convinced that it really was a superior product (fantastic screen, battery life, speed, size) but there isn't such a phone. And even if such a phone was made, plenty of consumers would argue that 'it isn't worth the price increase' <---- a purely subjective observation. This happened with the vaio z series of laptops.

 

[Artdeco]

I know that subjective experiences cannot be measured objectively (though some things that people believe are subjective are, in fact, objective).

For example:



This is completely subjective, because it's not a necessarily transferrable experience. Even if the resale price of Apple products was better, it does not make the product itself better. It makes someone like QueBert more likely to buy the product. I don't buy cell phones with a forward looking attitude towards resale. I think many more people actually care about how often they have to charge their phone.

What I am trying to say, in response to the OP's request, is that there are enough people out there that are not fooled by attempts within the crowd to push the marketing image beyond its reasonable limit. The battery life in the iPhone 6 made it an unsuitable purchase for me - I mean, posts in this thread went as far enough as to argue that in certain work environments everyone needs a usb battery pack in their phone. Not in my environment, and yet iPhone 6 users still need one.

In short - they are not the superior product they are made out to be. I'd pay 3000 USD for a phone if I was convinced that it really was a superior product (fantastic screen, battery life, speed, size) but there isn't such a phone. And even if such a phone was made, plenty of consumers would argue that 'it isn't worth the price increase' <---- a purely subjective observation. This happened with the vaio z series of laptops.

Yeah, I don't think you understand the difference between subjective and objective, things like used sales prices are objective.

 

[slackerinabox]

A week into my wife owning an iPhone 6s plus and, let me tell you - it's on a different planet than my flagship android, the s6 edge. The iPhone feels like a solid object, like something crafted vs something pieced together. Evertyhing works without a stutter, and the pieces of the ecosystem work fluidly and with such grace - plug in the usb in my car and, boom, carplay launches. Apple tv airplay? Just works beautifully. There's just a perfection of execution that android kids don't get, and it's worth a premium to me (but I'm not really paying a premium, my monthly charge is the same for a samsung flagship or apple flagship).

For example, I know android had live wallpapers first but the execution was something out of a 1990s video game, while apple's execution feels vivid, 3d, and really "live" - it's futuristic and slick. Find my iPhone works all the time, my android doesn't work if wifi's sleeping (it shouldn't, but it does). It's like the different between a casio and a hamilton (i didn't say rolex, i'm trying not to be pretentious). One tells the time, the other tells the time as well but make sure the pieces all fit together with more care and precision. To compare the iPhone 6s to something like an LG is absurd, they're just different in ways that have less to do with specs and more to do with attention to details execution.

 

[Aristotelian]

Yeah, I don't think you understand the difference between subjective and objective, things like used sales prices are objective.

You're making a mistake - inferring from fact to value. That's why you think I don't understand something which, in fact, you do not.

That iPhones can be sold one year later for more is (let's say) a fact. But not everyone resells their phone. However, everyone uses and charges their phone, and their use is affected by battery life.

So my criterion is objective in the sense that it is true for all usage cases and therefore the value generated in a Z3's superior battery life versus the 6 is an objective value and not subjective. Someone may like to resell their phones, and for that set of people resale value adds value. But since that's dependent on a specific value set that renders it a subjective concern in the overall analysis of the phone.

Hope that clarified things.