Good news, Apple! Your problems are all about to be solved.
Writing for The Motley Fool, Ashraf Eassa thinks he’s figured it out.
“Hey, Apple! Here’s 1 Way to Boost iPhone Sales.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Philip.)
It’s not “Charge a dollar for iPhones” but it’s still pretty dumb.
Why does Apple need to boost iPhone sales? Because in some quarters they sell more iPhones and in others they sell fewer iPhones. It is a weird phenomenon for which there is no name.
Other than cyclicality. Other than that. And possibly some others.
The unfortunate truth for Apple is that iPhone sales tend to drop significantly from the peak of a product cycle to the trough.
That is kind of the definition of peaks and troughs, yes.
What happens is easy to understand: Demand is sky-high for the new iPhone model in its first full quarter of availability, and as customers get their fill of the new device, sales drop sharply in subsequent quarters.
So we can rule out goblins?
Regardless of the cause, supernatural or not, Eassa has the fix.
What Apple should consider doing is releasing “new number” phones in the fall and then release updated versions of those phones — effectively the “s” versions — in the spring.
Just make twice as many phones! It’s easy.
That might sound great, but Apple doubling the number of iPhones they introduce in a year isn’t cool. Quintupling the number of iPhones they introduce in a year is cool.
And before you say “sextupling”, allow the Macalope to just say infinity times ten. Boom.
At that point, it could discount the phones that it introduced in the fall by $100 or so and then reveal newer, better devices at the older price points.
Oh, wait, this is kind of “charge a dollar for iPhones”.
That way, the company is introducing new innovations at twice the previous rate.
Eassa solves more problems before 9 a.m. than most people do all day. Unfortunately, he creates a new one for every problem he solves.
You can’t just crank the monkey wheel faster. That’s not how innovation works, particularly at Apple. They tend not to just jam something they’ve come up with into a device and ship it.
What are the downsides?
Oops, we accidentally invented and shipped Skynet. Everything was happening so fast!
…for Apple to be able to deliver products at a faster pace, it would need to substantially increase its investments in product research and development.
I KEEP THROWING HUNNERT DOLLAR BILLS AT MORE AND MORE ENGINEERS BUT THEY HAVEN’T MADE WITH THE INNERVATION.
It is super fun to cover opinions on Apple and have to deal with the idea of “iPhone fatigue” one day and the suggestion that Apple should ship twice as many iPhones every year the next.