Why Apple Skipped The iPhone 9- TechWars: Part 1

New Year. New iPhone

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of iPhone, Apple decided to bring us 3 new phones this year. The expected release of the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus and the unexpected introduction to the IPhone X… And for goodness sakes it’s not the letter “x” it is the roman numeral for 10. Now, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus really doesn’t differ much from last years iPhone 7’s besides the A11 Bionic chip (which is a monster). The current trend for 2017 calls for phones to have “edge to edge display”, which essentially means the screens would extend all the way to the edge of the phone, eliminating bezel’s completely. Here, the iPhone X delivers with a huge 5.8 inch OLED display. Also worth noting is the new dual camera with portrait lighting capabilities, and the facial recognition unlock replacing the fingerprint unlock we all know and love. However, there is a BIG BUT…. The iPhone X costs $999. $300 more than the iPhone 8.

The Marketing Play

Why this huge price increase? Why the iPhone X and not 9? Well, to start off, Apple uses the “X” logo instead of the number 10 for promotional flare. The iPhone X naming helps position the device above the regular iPhone 8 without explicitly labeling it as the “iPhone 10” because most people are simply going to call it the iPhone X and not pronounce it as iPhone ten. Apple knows this, and the company only uses the "X" logo in its promotional materials. The chief design officer of Apple, Jony Ive says "iPhone ten", in the company’s keynote video, but I’d be surprised if we hear Apple explicitly call it the iPhone ten on a regular basis. This subtle naming difference and the $300 price hike, makes it clear it’s a special edition iPhone, that’s going to make people think they’re not getting the latest iPhone if they go for the iPhone 8. Let’s face it, the iPhone X is the device people will want, but most will go for the iPhone 8 simply because the X is priced so high. Microsoft did a similar trick for itsWindows 10 naming. The software giant skipped Windows 9 and went straight to Windows 10, but Microsoft did this primarily to encourage Windows 7 users to upgrade. Looking at your PC and seeing Windows 7 when there’s a Windows 10 version out makes it seem all that much older, and it’s a marketing trick that helped promote free upgrades.

A Different Pricing Strategy

Another interesting thing Apple is doing is still selling the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus for $450 and $550 repectively, and they're an absolute steal if you're not a heavy smartphone user. This is a big play on Apples side because they are trying to bring iPhone straight from the stores at a lower price point. In the past when a new iPhone came out, Apple would discontinue selling the iPhone models 2 years prior. So, for example when the iPhone 7 came out they discontinued the iPhone 5. Doing this would allow the newer models to push forward even harder in sales. That has now changed and here’s why.

The picture above shows the current list of phones available now. As you can see the prices cover a wide range. This is Apple’s way of getting customers who have a lower budget rather than going for their large, yet limited target market that can afford the more expensive price points. In turn, Apple enters the race for the mid-range phones to compete with emerging phone companies such as OnePlus.

So far...

iPhone 8 sales have been rumored to be disappointing. This makes sense, assuming people would be waiting for the clearly better iPhone X. However, that is not the case, they are in fact stable (not amazing though). But it doesn’t look like Apple is too concerned about that anyways. We will just have to wait and see on November 3rd when the IPhone X ships to customers.