Why does Apple only make 1 phone?

I don't think having a diverse range of phones necessarily correlates with innovation. The iPhone is boring a lot of people these days but I would argue that is down to the operating system more than anything, as the phone itself while lacking newer features is still a nice looking and solid device.

You have to look at the larger iOS product family, inclusive of the iPads, to see the full picture. I don't think we'll see a larger iPhone any time soon and the older models serve the needs of those who want a small phone.

And of course do not underestimate Apple's upsell strategy. They are absolute masters at placing and pricing to emphasize the more expensive options, or even buying two products. For that reason alone I find it highly unlikely that Apple would offer a more fine grained range of devices like you find from other manufacturers.
 
It seems to me that it's symptomatic of an Apple that is afraid of innovation, or at the very least, afraid of changing anything. We've had many, many iterations of very different iPods over the years, designed for each part of the marketplace. With the iPhone, Apple's strategy just seems to be pile 'em high and sell 'em expensive. If that works for them, then great, but it's not the best strategy for consumers.
 
There is plenty of room in Apples own market share for another size of iphone device, and if anything it would increase an ever dwindling market share.

Given that there will be complete saturation in the Smartphone market in the not to distant future, not giving people more than one option will be suicide for their on going profit.

As for the argument they keep the older models, great but that's already been done, and if you hadn't bought one already why would you buy one now just because they knocked £50 off the RRP?

The ipad mini is proof for Apple that it's not a 'one size fits all' world, people like choice, it feels like they have some control, and giving people choice is a very powerful marketing tool.
 
The reason apple only make one phone is because they only need to make one phone. Apple isn't Samsung. Samsung is an international conglomerate which has thousands of different currently supported products. Apple is a marketing company which gets it's sales from manipulative marketing, you only need one model if you can convince the market that they only need one model. They cant use blanket statements like "The best this", "The most advanced" and "The most radical" if they have loads of different models.
 
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I not buying that it's simply a lack of innovation. I would argue that Apple's greatest innovation is NOT trying to be all things to all people.

The iPhone 5 and iPad Mini especially are motivated by a changing market rather than specifically trying to meet the needs of a broader set of customers. If it wasn't for the popularity of the smaller tablets the iPad Mini would never have seen the light of day.
 
Rumours of iPhone mini coming this year along with the iPhone 5s. Again Apple trying to get into the mini market.
 
PardonTheWait said:
Apple don't (normally) make what people ask for, they make what they want and then tell you you want it.
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Apocryphal henry ford line please...

'If I'd have asked people what they wanted, they'd have said a better horse...'

If you want to innovate in any kind of serious way then asking people what they want is a poor strategy, users don't have much vision.

For instance, a while back lots of users always said they wanted replaceable batteries but the figures for sales of replacement batteries suggested virtually nobody bought them.

But why only one phone - well I suspect some aspects of it are far more expensive than the competition and they want to maximise the investment (industrial design I'm going to guess costs apple more than samsung).

Having one product targeting the largest possible audience makes advertising more effective and keeps costs down in supply chain too. Lots of sound business reasons floating around...
 
It's actually very simple to see why Apple are doing what they do - just use the Mac and iPod (and iPad) as examples.

The Mac is a high-margin-low-volume product. The cheapest laptop is £849 which prices the vast, vast majority of people out of it. Especially when you can get a 3rd Gen i5 15" Windows laptop for half the price (now is NOT the time to start a Windows vs. OS X or WinTel Laptop design vs. Mac laptop design comparison ;) ). Compared to the entire Windows market Mac sales are a niche. But if you compare Apple to other computer manufacturers they come SECOND. Only behind Lenovo. As far as running a computer manufacturing business (in other words making profit from making computers) they are doing pretty darn well.

The iPod was/is a low(er)-margin-high-volume product. The thing is if you have a desirable product such as the 1st - 4th Gen iPod (or, ya know, like the iPhone ;) ) then you are hoping that people will pay for such a thing. If you introduce a cheaper product (iPod mini/nano) then sales will collect entirely around that. Not only because you will get people who wouldn't buy an iPod buying that but also people who bought an iPod "Classic" who only really needed the mini/nano and will buy that next time. Which means lower margins, lower profit, so an increase in volume is needed. Apple dominated the industry with this tactic.

The iPhone is following the Mac model. So long as enough people are prepared to pay the premium they don't care what other people are doing (Android). There are only two people really in smartphones at the moment - Apple & Samsung. Apple makes around 70%+ of smartphone profits. Samsung in the 10-20% region. You tell me Apple are doing anything wrong at the moment (from a business not consumer point of view)? They are still the primary app platform as well for the same reason - more money to be made compared to Android.

If they bring out an iPhone mini it means they are shifting into an iPod-like volume model. Sales will entirely collect around it, profits will be lowered, so they'll have to increase volume.


As an aside this is why they brought out an iPad mini. They've decided volume is more important than margins at the moment for the tablet market (probably an attempt to stop Android tablets gaining a foothold) so watch sales utterly collect around the mini.
 
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Azza said:
Because they're not innovative enough. (srs)
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We all know that the 5s is just around the corner, the new iPad replaced a product only just 6 months old.

As for the iPad mini, you can bet your bottom dollar the iPad mini with Retina will be released this year.

That isn't strictly innovative but when you have the customer base that Apple have you don't have to worry that it will sell.

There will probably be a TV is the near future and Apple will market it as though it is the first ever TV that has been produced.

You might not like it but it is a formula that works.
 
Fillado said:
As an aside this is why they brought out an iPad mini. They've decided volume is more important than margins at the moment for the tablet market (probably an attempt to stop Android tablets gaining a foothold) so watch sales utterly collect around the mini.
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Incorrect. The iPad Mini was not designed primarily to focus on volume sales.

It was designed to be a direct competitor to the market dominant Nexus 7 after Apple realised they had missed a trick with a 7" tablet.

N.B. The rest of your post is spot on!
 
bertles86 said:
Incorrect. The iPad Mini was not designed primarily to focus on volume sales.

It was designed to be a direct competitor to the market dominant Nexus 7 after Apple realised they had missed a trick with a 7" tablet.
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Correct, Apple have always focused on high margins over volume. If you look at all their products they will gain market share quickly but over time they will not be number one in the market but their higher margins mean they usually outperform their competitors in terms of profits.
 
It seems to work for them, compared to say HTC who went too far the other way and released a new phone every 24hrs.
 
It's worked for them so far but don't forget they've transformed from a company that sold 10's of millions to one that moves 100's of millions of devices in a relatively short space of time.

The game has changed and their strategies will have to change accordingly. Look how quickly they revved the iPad this time and how they backtracked on the 7" tablet.

The signs are there that they are becoming less dictatorial because that's just not going to cut it on this new scale.
 
bigredshark said:
Apocryphal henry ford line please...

'If I'd have asked people what they wanted, they'd have said a better horse...'

If you want to innovate in any kind of serious way then asking people what they want is a poor strategy, users don't have much vision.

For instance, a while back lots of users always said they wanted replaceable batteries but the figures for sales of replacement batteries suggested virtually nobody bought them.

But why only one phone - well I suspect some aspects of it are far more expensive than the competition and they want to maximise the investment (industrial design I'm going to guess costs apple more than samsung).

Having one product targeting the largest possible audience makes advertising more effective and keeps costs down in supply chain too. Lots of sound business reasons floating around...
Click to expand...

Apple aren't innovative though. They certainly don't ask what people want, and instead tell them what they want, but that's because they're really a glorified marketing company.

They simply do not innovate, they just know how to sell stuff very well to a select subset of people that they know will fall for and accept all their marketing claims.

For example "It just works", think how many times you see Apple users wheel that one out as if it's a property exclusive to Apple products, as if everything non-Apple suffers from issues that gets in the way of its usability, and that the Apple products never suffer from issues, and you can tell just from that that they're are simply a marketing company, a very very good one.
 
Every company should be a marketing company. Marketing is the whole concept of working out what your target market needs, building that product, and then telling people it exists. This idea that in order to buy an Apple product you must somehow have been tricked just doesn't hold up in my experience. I own lots of Apple products, all of them were bought because they are better than the alternatives.

They shout loudly about being the best because they pretty much are. The iPhone changed the industry, they were the first to bring multitouch to a wide audience and the App Store set the standard to be followed. Android was a reaction to this, just have a look at the prototype devices that existed before the iPhone arrived.

Design by committee is what Apple don't do, and this is one of their strengths. Just look at the utter crap coming out of CES.

I'm not sure how you can claim they aren't innovative, surely changing the face of the market counts for something?
 
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I have to defend Apple on this innovation point.

The iMac form factor was way ahead of its time. They realised a long battery life in laptops is a big deal. The original iPhone was probably the single greatest gadget I've ever owned and the retina display on the iPhone4 blew me away. They introduced a 'giant iPod' that nobody apparently wanted and look what happened there.

Yes iOS is stagnated and some of their marketing is an outright lie, but as much as I dislike what Apple have become the (lack of) innovation argument doesn't do it for me.
 
spoffle said:
Apple aren't innovative though. They certainly don't ask what people want, and instead tell them what they want, but that's because they're really a glorified marketing company.
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Sometimes I think there is a general misunderstanding of the word innovation. Apple are not always at the cutting edge of technology but they are able to design new methods to make the current technology work far more impressively than the rest of the market. The hardware may not be innovative but it's how they used it.

Tablets and phones are the best examples both of these were around long before Apple but they were able to put them together in a way that made them far more useful to the average person than any other company.
 
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