Know when to fold ’em: the double tock
JULY 21ST, 2016 — POST 199
The next iPhone could be a bit disappointing. If you put any stock into the hardware leaks that seem to be being corroborated day by day — the same leaks from a range of sources — you might be thinking the same. The headphone jack will probably be removed. The antenna lines will be moved from the back. Other than the Apple logo, the only feature on the back of the next iPhone will be an engorged camera hump, housing presumably a dramatically improved camera. (And it better be dramatic for a hump worthy of the bell ringer of Notre Dame). But from a glance at the Apple Store, you probably won’t be able to tell the next iPhones (of which there’ll probably be 3) from the current 6s or 2014’s 6, Plus or otherwise.
A glorified refresh might be all we get this year. But that wasn’t how it was meant to be. Since the first iPhone, Apple has upgraded in the typical tick-tock cycle: big changes on year, iterative changes the next. With the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus released September of last year, by the divinely ordained release cycle we’re due for a tick. With figures of slowing iPhone sales, and the Samsung Galaxy S7 outpacing Apple’s offering on the hometurf of the U.S., Apple seems like they’re due for a tick too.
Despite a renewed focus on diversifying their revenue stream with services like Apple Music and changes to subscription-based purchases for app developers — above all an incentive for money to stay within Apple’s ecosystem of the App Store — the iPhone remains the foundation of their business. But even if a tick could reassert the iPhone’s dominance, Apple seems to be staring down a different strategy: the double tock.
My suspicion of the double tock is strengthened by the model name that is printed on the leaked handsets. Underneath the iPhone wordmark, just a basic boxed “S” — the brand flourish reserved for the tock releases. We also have to take into account next year, long off in the consumer’s mind but one Apple probably is in the early stages of production of already. 2017 will mark the 10th anniversary of the first iPhone release. But the anniversary will be more than a celebration of a single handset.
With the iPhone’s release in 2007, the world changed for everyone. Sure, the changes are still to be fully felt in parts of the world, but they’re on the cards. Apple — one of the central narratives in the history of personal computing — can’t be blamed for wanting to indulge, revel, and borderline gloat in September of 2017. They can’t be blamed for wanting to condense a legacy-in-the-making into five inches of glass and aluminium. What will almost certainly be called simply “iPhone” (with Plus and Pro variants), the 2017 iPhone deserves to be a consumer electronics monument.
It’s my contention then that Apple is intentionally bringing the bare minimum to market with this year’s “iPhone S” (probably the name, they’re done with model numbers). They’re leaning into the iPhone’s recent weak performance to keep consumers thirsty for 2017’s release. Because there’s a pretty simple risk they’re taking. Of prospective iPhone buyers — in developed markets at least — there are three categories that can be broken apart: adopters, refreshers, and upgraders.
Adopters are those who buy a handset every year, or would like to, to keep up with the latest. Refreshers understand that a handset would do well being replaced every 2 years, riding the predictable tick-tock cycle. Those who are contracted, their phones subsidised by carriers, fall into this category too. Upgraders are those that wait until their phone is rendered essentially unusable before going for a huge upgrade, sometimes waiting four or more years to get on board. For upgraders, any new iPhone is going to be fine. They’re holding out until September, their current 16GB 4s bloated with family photos and sluggish Pokémon Go performance. It’s adopters and refreshers that Apple stand to lose in delivering the double tock.
Basically, Apple has to risk one of two scenarios happening: the adopters or refreshers will either switch to a hot piece of Android hardware, or they’ll look down at their iPhone 6 or 6s and think “I could make this last another year”. Neither of these cases is exactly good for Apple, but the former is certainly worse, potentially losing consumers to a competing platform longterm. But if adopters and refreshers are able to be kept in the latter category — through platform-specific hooks like iMessage which is a seeing substantial updates with iOS 10 later this year — both these categories will clamour to get their hands on 2017’s iPhone. If they don’t move to Android this year, this group becomes next year’s slam dunk.
Even if Apple are willingly pulling a double tock this year, the iPhone S will still kill, especially in China where the brand has the caché of Prada or Hermès. So it probably will still break records, as an iPhone release has done every year since it was released. But even if the market performance around the world isn’t what we would expect of an Apple hardware release, it’s for a very good reason. Next year will be off chops.
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