Apple is far behind its competitors in pretty much every area except hardware. They are still terrible at running stable web services. There is a new critical bug or security hole in their OS every month. And all of their non-hardware offerings - Apple Maps, Apple Music, iCloud, iTunes, Siri etc. - range from very bad to average.
IMO they need to be investing a LOT more on the software side of things if they intend to stay competitive, especially since iPhone sales are already drying up.
iOS is arguably the most secure operating system in widespread use. Not sure why the OP thinks otherwise. macOS while not as secure is still in pretty good shape. But largely irrelevant to Apple's financial future.
I think the price is a mistake, but I don't think it's "failure" reflects a weakening Apple's of brand competitiveness as much as it is a sign of the relative maturity of smartphone hardware.
In other words, people are buying phones less often, because phones for 3-4 years ago are still quite capable of meeting the needs of most users, so people are naturally going to start buying phones less often.
I suspect Apple was very aware of this trend, and the price increase was an effort to increase margins to make up for an expected decrease in unit sales. After all, Samsung also indicated lower guidance on their Smartphone numbers for this year, so Apple is not the only company affected by this trend.
Maybe they missed the mark a bit, and a significant number of potential customers chose not to upgrade this year, but I seriously doubt those customers turned around and bought an Android instead. I suspect they will just get plan to get another year out of their 6S and wait for what comes out this year.
> I suspect they will just get plan to get another year out of their 6S and wait for what comes out this year
This is the situation I'm in. Have a 6s that I'm not in a rush to upgrade until something appealing appears. It's plenty fast enough for everything I do. I actually started looking at Android alternatives thinking I could get a high-end phone with a removable battery but learned that's not a real thing anymore. Plus I don't like the idea of using too many Google services.
Still not sure what my upgrade path with be yet. Maybe an iPhone 8 but it feels like I'm just getting the same phone as I've got but without a headphone jack.
They can still charge a premium over any other phone manufacturer, and they sell at the about the same volume. They have a lock in that seems likely to protect that premium for the foreseeable future. As long as they can charge a premium they get a nice profit margin.
Speaking for myself: a combination of ease of use, features, quality and a mature ecosystem. They certainly don't have a perfect track record in any of these, QA being a well-documented example in the last few years. And the alternatives have gotten better, but they're still not good enough to convince me to switch.
iPhones have better hardware/software integration, which is easy for Apple to do because they control everything. They get better performance out of their hardware because of this.
There are announced security holes in every operating system. But unlike Android, iOS users can actually get security patches for years after they buy their device.
Android still has a horrible permission system after all of these years and privacy is laughable.
And as far as “iPhones sells are drying up”. They are still predicted to report the second highest revenues this quarter of any company in history - only surpassed by their previous record.
Their power cord keep on dying for my macbook 2013.
I had a temp iphone and it took over a lot of my texts by redirecting it toward apple's server first. When I got my android back I receive no text msgs from my friends who have iphone.
It also seem like they're making cheaper stuff so they can increase their margin via tech support and peripherals.
I agree they should invest more in software so they don't have to resort to these crappy tactic.
Also they should make a cheaper iphone region lock it to china and india only if they want to increase their margin. Their current strategy for these markets is stupid.
IMO they need to be investing a LOT more on the software side of things if they intend to stay competitive, especially since iPhone sales are already drying up.