Problem for Apple is that a £50 smartphone is 90% as good as their £500 offering.

And their main selling point to justify someone spending that £450 premium is "coolness" which is diminishing due to various cock-ups, greed, overly aggressive court action and general sloppiness.

Only one way they are going from here unless they can once again "invent" something genuinely revolutionary again.

It hasn't.

Even with all the chavs having iphones now?

Yeah very .

Don't understand any of that post

You said coolness wasn't diminishing because of sales.

I said it is not the premium cool device any more because chavs on every street corner have iPhones now.

Depends a bit on how you view coolness. I had an original iPhone, because back then it was different to most phones on the market, which is something I look for in most things in life. e.g I'm more Alfa or Volvo instead of BMW & Audi.
My personnel view is that it is still a great phone but it really is very common today, and I like to be different. A Ford Focus or BMW 3 Series are both great cars, but they will never turn heads, whereas an Alfa Giulietta or Volvo C70 probably would.
The other thing iPhones have going for them, is the fact that they are simple to use, everyone from kids to grannies can easily use one. They have a pretty captive market with the amount of people who have bought into iTunes so they will not fail overnight, but tech companies have had lots of ups and downs over the years and can fail if not careful as the likes of Sega, Atari and Commodore have shown.

How can they be under valued, but unless they bring out the next big thing the share price will continue to fall?

That sounds like you also think they are over valued. Any company that brings out the next big thing will see their value rise, so unless you know something no one else does, this is just as likely to be Sony, Samsung or several other electronics manufacturers.

Wow, if you want to be cool then fine. I personally dont give a toss.

Alfa's have terrible reliability. The forums say dont worry about the engine light coming on all the time, its expected. Yeah right.

Please tell me this post is a wind up.

I think reliabilty on the new Alfas have come on a long way.

It certainly needed to

They have, and every car company has it's share of issues. Do a search for "BMW 3 series cutting out" for a whole heap of problems.

I think I should have re-phased my post as I certainly do not see myself as cool(more of a geeky nerd ) I just like to be different, as to me it makes life more interesting. What I am trying to get across is that something that someone views as cool, could be very uncool to someone else, coolness is very subjective.

The Problem for Apple, looking ahead, is you got the likes of ZTE, Huwei, and countless other chinese makers going for the emerging market, and now also, the western market, you got Blackberry trying to win back the enterprise and business sector, plus they are doing quite well in the emerging market also, where Apple have no presence, since they "don't do budget".

you got Samsung killing it in the mass market, Nokia attempting a fightback, HTC trying hard to win back market share also. Do Apple realize what exactly they are up against now? this isn't 2007. They stole a march on the competition, and no one was close for 2 years. But the game has changed, and Apple have not adapted. Same old strategy,, same pricing policy, same old design, same old software.

is it any surprise now, today in 2013, that investors are losing confidence in Apple? The long term success of a company is not measured by how much money you are making now, but what you intend to do going forward, to keep on making money.

"Apple’s profit for the last quarter alone is well over twice Amazon’s profit over its entire entire existence.,"

http://go.bloomberg.com/market-now/2...azons-promise/

via daring fireball

I don't think Apple are going anywhere.

No shit.

This isn't about them going bust tomorrow. Its about their profile changing. They aren't the same company that they were 2 years ago by any stretch of the imagination.

Many more articles like this one http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissaf...cool-to-teens/ than there were a couple of years ago.

Has Apple lost its cool ? obviously thats a matter of opinion. Once it was the hipsters with their macs but now anyone can buy a slice of that 'cool' with an iPhone or an iPad. I have teenage kids and I also run a junior football squad. very few of them have iPhones as they really dont want the same phone that their middle aged dads have.

The iPhone may still be cool to many posters here - but if they have lost the image with the youth then its a slippery slope.

I cant tell you they arent cool same as you cant tell me they are. its not an argument either of us can win

I would say kids know 'cool' better than us more mature types ..... although on the flip side we can afford car insurance and buy alcohol so they dont have everything their way

Whilst not a particularly scientific measurement of coolness, the fact that their competitor can satirise them as now being a phone for people's parents, and having that message resonate, is not encouraging for a brand that would like to be 'cool'.

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/ipho...3-ad-50009253/

The logic is simple though, if something is popular because it is COOL, then it's not a good thing. Cool stuff can very quickly become uncool. Things that are less cool, but simply work and help you get something done usually has more staying power. Fashions always change, and the iphone has always been like one big fashion accessory

Ok, the argument from a few on here seems to be that the iPhone has lost it's coolness. Now it seem to be the same people that use to say that the only reason apple sold phones was because they are cool.

So, can someone explain how they have just managed to sell 48m of these uncool phones in a 3 month period? I assume it is because they are selling a quality product.

Lots of people buy uncool stuff......

What I've said in the past is that apple used to have an image of coolness. They were normally high priced and nicely designed. Often things people aspired to owning. When people hit middle aged and earned more it was often something they purchased. Problem is that kids never find what their parents like cool.... not their clothes, or their music, and now not their phones. So whilst us middle aged posters might think things are cool or not we all know its really the teenagers that get to decide such things its just the way its always been .....

So a generation of teenagers grew up thinking that iphones were cool. The next generation is growing up thinking they are less so.

I don't actually agree with that generalisation. Outside of phones ask any kid if they would like an Aston Martin or even a BMW, I think it would be rare that the answer is no, my parents have one.

People (including teenagers) aspire to owning things, that is why high end products exist.

Back to apple, the iPhone isn't aimed at teenagers (for them to buy) it is aimed at the parents of teenages (for them to buy for their kids, after they have bought it for themselves). Having a teenages child myself, they would bite my hand off if I offered to buy them an iPhone.

Pricing is to do with my point. where has this aspiration gone if every chav has the product already?

I agree with much of what you say but the BMW and Aston analogy doesn't work that well as kids can't afford to buy or drive one..... And to be fair BMW have lost much of their cool as these days there are more 3 series sold than mondeos .... They went through a highly publicised loss of cool a few years back (i drive a BMW but don't claim to be cool !).

With the iPhone kids can afford them. Plus any thing that becomes something owned by the majority instantly becomes less cool. Kids tend to think things are cool when they start off. Once everyone has one they become less cool and the cool kids move to something else. Its how fashions and fads work.

As I've said before, I do not have a clue what you mean by chav, and I assumed if they these people own an iPhone they either bought it with their own money, or their parents bought it for them.

What are you saying, if someone you don't like owns the phone you want then you don't then want it! Maybe I'm not so easily influenced, otherwise I may not have bought my samsung

How can a kid afford an iPhone? They are either £500 or on contract. You must give your kids more pocket money than I give mine