iPhone Prelude

Tuesday, 18 July 2017

Rene Ritchie, “iPhones of Future Past: Understanding iPhone 8”:

iPhone 8 will simply let Apple impress in a different way — by including technologies that don’t yet reach iPhone scale. In other words, by bringing tomorrow’s iPhone to market today.

In terms of the business, it’s really no different than getting an iPhone onto Verizon, onto China Mobile, with bigger and bigger displays, or with smaller displays again — it’s about annexing adjacent markets and maximizing the revenue potential for iPhone.

As it becomes harder to sell more iPhones — the population of earth is now a limiting factor — selling more of an iPhone becomes beneficial. It’s the same benefit Apple gets from selling services revenue on top of iPhone, but in atoms, not bits.

Ritchie is using the name “iPhone 8” to refer to what I’ve called the “iPhone Pro” — the high-end OLED-display model that I think might start at over $1000. Name aside, I think he’s got exactly the right idea on how Apple can position this: a future iPhone today.

Honda used to sell a car in the U.S. called the Prelude. Edmunds’s description:

Honda established itself in America with the Civic and Accord — both good, solid but basic cars. But big profits in the automotive world don’t come from basic cars that sell for commodity prices. Those profits come from cars that get consumers so excited that they’ll pay a premium price just to have one. The Prelude was Honda’s first attempt at an exciting car.

The Prelude was Honda’s technological leading edge. Features that are now expected from Honda, like the double-wishbone suspension under the Accord, fuel injection, and VTEC electronic variable valve timing system showed up first on the Prelude before migrating across the Honda line (though VTEC first showed up on the 1990 Acura NSX). The Prelude was also a test bed for some technologies that went nowhere, like four-wheel steering.

In a broad sense, that’s my idea for the iPhone Pro — a premium-priced product that offers us early access to technologies and components that will be (or even just might be) in all iPhones in another year or two.