[TECH] Has the Apple dominance come to an end?
Decreasing iOS11 adoption rate, dropping sales of iPhone 8 and the unsuccessful scalping of iPhoneX all suggests the down-slope of Apple smartphone.
Why does this happen? Is there any way to go back to the golden age when everyone worshipped iPhone 6 as the best invention ever?
Signs that show the decreasing endorsement towards Apple smartphone
1. Lower Adoption Rate of iOS 11
According to the graph above, we can see that iOS11 was being released from the 9th September, and it takes about a month for over half of all the iPhone users to upgrade their device to iOS11. Many users prefer using the older version and are indifferent towards the new iOS.
Comparing this to iOS10, iOS10 reaches 54% of devices within half a month after the new version was released, which suggest that the previous iOS had a much faster adoption rate than the current one.
2. Lower adoption rate of the newest model
Many people were surprised by the slip of the new iPhone 8. From the pie chart, it is noticeable that iPhone8 models only contributed an extremely tiny percentage (around 0.7% in total) of the overall market share, which is so insignificant comparing to the previous model iPhone7.
3. Unsuccessful Scalping of iPhoneX
In Hong Kong, flocks of scalpers were reselling iPhoneX right in front of Apple store.
Right before the release of iPhoneX, there were rumors that the price of iPhoneX can be scalped to a peak of $30000 - 50000 HKD (around 3000 - 5000 GBP), yet rumors are simply just rumors.
The reality is that 64GB Silver iPhoneX were bought at a price of 8600 HKD (around 860GBP), wheres the original official selling price is 8588HKD (around 859GBP). It seems that the scaplers ended up earning simply 1 pound profit - which is definitely out of everyone's expectation and resulted in broken dreams...
What is the possible reason behind these trends?
Why not iOS11?
Let's look closer to how iOS11 is different from the previous versions. The biggest change is that they change the layout of the control centre, and add a button to switch the cellular data on and off. Many people may not be willing to adapt a completely new layout but prefer to stick with the old ones instead - which is a possible reason why they do not upgrade their OS. Switching the cellular data on and off may not be that appealing to some people who just use all-you-can-eat data all the time without worrying that their internet allowance may run out. One feature that probably can greatly enhance user experience is that the users are now able to customise their own control centre by adding different functions that they frequently use. But, to be fair, how many people would actually spend the time to create their own special home centre rather than using the original official one?
Upgraded Siri, new App Store, increased filters in camera... all these changes are quite minor and are just simply improvising existing functions. They don't really affect the existing iPhone user that much and hence users are reluctant to upgrade their iOS.
The good news is that iOS 11 is bringing the convenience of Apple Pay to messages - now it is possible to send and receive money through communicating with messages. This feature will be released this fall and for sure can be an incentive for more people to upgrade iOS in order to make use of this feature.
To attract more iPhone users to upgrade their system, Apple must try their best to make revolutionary changes like Apple Pay instead of just improvising the old existing features such as Siri and emojis - although I can't deny the fact that one of the main reasons for user to adapt to the new OS is to get themselves to use the most up-to-date emoji bundles released along with the new iOS11...
Why not iPhone 8?
What's so special about iPhone 8? It introduces wireless charging which indeed forces customers to buy a wireless charger(which they call it AirPower) as a bundle. Many people have already complaint about the fact that iPhone7 doesn't have earphone plug hole and the faulty design still retains in iPhone8. Well, technically the design itself is not faulty, the earphone plug hole needs to be removed so that the iPhone can be as thin as possible (even thinner than the radius of the plug hole), but this design is introducing so much inconvenience due to the fact that users will need to carry an extra lightning converter and people are raging over it. Durable glass material makes the phone water, dust and fingerprint resistant. New colour space grey and rose gold are also introduced - the appearance of iPhone is never disappointing, yet it is nothing surprising. To be frank, there are not much distinct features that separate iPhone7 from iPhone 8 simply from the appearance.
Some people also suggested that the iPhoneX may be hurting the sales of iPhone 8 because their sales date don't space out that much and many people would just choose iPhoneX over iPhone8 despite of its higher price but much better functions.
Why not iPhoneX?
The new model stands out from any other models with its distinct appearance - a much larger monitor without the home button. The monitor makes use of OLED, which gives sharper colour than normal LEDs. The drawback of OLED is that its colour will fade eventually over a period of time, most diehard apple fans are not aware of this but they should not worry at all because Apple releases new model every year and they would have changed to a new phone already before the light actually fades out. Everyone knows about the incident happened on the showcase of iPhoneX, the face recognition system FaceID seems not to be functioning very well. You may not want to be guinea pig for this new technology. What's going viral on social media about the new iPhone is the possibility of creating your own animated emoji - another features brought by the new face recognition technology.
Above is a Youtube video of a Japanese youtuber playing with the Animoji, which has hit 13M views by now (1/12/2017) - seems like most people really appreciate the new Animoji.
Tim Cook has described the iPhoneX as “the biggest leap forward since the original iPhone”, which is definitely true when it applies to apple phone but not the general smartphone market, especially when Apple's biggest rival Samsung has already released several models with identical appearance as iPhoneX. Samsung has been using the face recognition system since long ago and now they are hailing over their new unlocking system - Iris Scanner in their newest model Samsung Galaxy S8. Apple definitely lagged behind Samsung in terms of these aspects.
Why shouldn't Apple worry about it?
Apple users have been well known for their loyalty - iOS users will just stick with iOS all the time as they have already gotten used to it.
From the graph, it is observable that the retention rates of Apple smartphone has the highest percentage of 92%, which outnumber many of the other brands including Samsung. Some people may think that the number of android users outnumber the amount of iOS users, which is not a problem at all because there are much more smartphones adopting the Android system but iOS is uniquely designed just for Apple products.
Surely Apple has done a great job for keeping their own customers, but they do need to put more effort in attracting new customers as well instead of letting them driving to support Samsung instead. iPhoneX is definitely a revolutionary change to the iPhone series but it duplicates quite a lot of technology Samsung has already been adopting. Apple need to catch up with Samsung and even go past them - surprise us with ground breaking technology!
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