Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Apple boss hints at lower iPhone prices to fight falling sales

Trevor Mogg
By

Apple boss Tim Cook has suggested the tech company could lower iPhone prices in some markets in a bid to boost sales.

News of the possible price change came on Tuesday, January 29 as Apple announced iPhone revenue of $51.9 billion for the most recent holiday quarter, marking a 15-percent year-on-year decline.

Recommended Videos

Apple is considering lowering the cost of its handsets because the strong dollar has made the devices more expensive when converting to local currencies, Cook told Reuters this week.

Related

“As we’ve gotten into January and assessed the macroeconomic condition in some of those markets, we’ve decided to go back to more commensurate with what our local prices were a year ago in hopes of helping the sales in those areas,” the CEO said while declining to offer specific details on new pricing.

Apple posted total revenue of $84.3 billion for the quarter ending December 29, 2018 — a decline of 5 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. It was Apple’s first decline in both revenue and profit in more than a decade.

The confirmed slowdown in iPhone sales had been expected as Tim Cook had already warned investors at the start of January. In a letter published on January 2, the Apple chief cited pressure on the global economy and Apple’s failure to “foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China” as factors affecting sales, as well as the aforementioned strong dollar. He added that sales had also been hit by customers “taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements,” which resulted in fewer people upgrading to the latest iPhones.

Notably, there was no mention of the increasing competition from Chinese rivals. Huawei, for example, sold 200 million phones (includes sister brand Honor) in 2018, making it the second biggest smartphone manufacturer globally, with Samsung and Apple placed first and third, respectively. With growing pressure on the global smartphone market, Apple and its rivals clearly face serious challenges to maintain healthy handset sales.

Brighter spots in Apple’s quarterly results included a 19-percent year-on-year rise for revenue from all products and services after excluding the iPhone.

Services revenue, which includes the App Store and Apple Music, reached an all-time high of $10.9 billion, up 19 percent over the previous year. In addition, revenue from Mac computers and wearables increased by 9 percent, with sales of home devices and accessories rising by 33 percent, the company said. Revenue from iPad sales increased by 17 percent on a year earlier, with sales boosted by new additions to its tablet lineup in 2018.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Here’s how Apple could change your iPhone forever
An iPhone 15 Pro Max laying on its back, showing its home screen.

Over the past few months, Apple has released a steady stream of research papers detailing its work with generative AI. So far, Apple has been tight-lipped about what exactly is cooking in its research labs, while rumors circulate that Apple is in talks with Google to license its Gemini AI for iPhones.

But there have been a couple of teasers of what we can expect. In February, an Apple research paper detailed an open-source model called MLLM-Guided Image Editing (MGIE) that is capable of media editing using natural language instructions from users. Now, another research paper on Ferret UI has sent the AI community into a frenzy.

Read more
There’s a big problem with the iPhone’s Photos app
The Apple iPhone 15 Plus's gallery app.

While my primary device these days continues to be my iPhone 15 Pro, I’ve dabbled with plenty of Android phones since I’ve been here at Digital Trends. One of my favorite brands of phone has been the Google Pixel because of its strong suite of photo-editing tools and good camera hardware.

Google first added the Magic Eraser capability with the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, which is a tool I love using. Then, with the Pixel 8 series, Google added the Magic Editor, which uses generative AI to make edits that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. There are also tools like Photo Unblur, which is great for old photographs and enhancing images that were captured with low-quality sensors.

Read more
This new folding phone costs less than half the price of the iPhone 15 Pro Max
ZTE Flip 5G color options.

Earlier this year, ZTE offshoot Nubia showed off a foldable phone, and expectedly, the biggest draw was its supposedly attractive asking price. As U.S. shoppers waited for the phone to hit retail shelves, ZTE launched it in Japan as the Libero Flip. Thankfully, the wait is finally over on this side of the Atlantic, as well.

Nubia's website has recently listed the Nubia Flip 5G for pr-eorder on its website. The best part is the asking price, which is only $500 for the base variant with a respectable 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. You can bump the RAM to 12GB and double the storage capacity for an additional $200.

Read more