[cm2187]

There was a very interesting podcast that went into all the details of the AI supply chain shortage [1]

The key takeaway for smartphones isn't so much that iphones will cost $150-200 more, which apple customers have shown they can stomach. But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDG_Hx3BSUE

[AnthonyMouse]

Or they'll start making cheap phones with <=2GB of RAM again and people will have to write software that uses memory efficiently (the horror).

[kilroy123]

This is low-key a dream of mine. That we _start_ hyper-optimizing code to use less RAM and resources overall.

[mort96]

Forget hyper-optimizing, how about we just stop throwing away gigabytes for no reward? If we get there, then we can start thinking about maybe actually optimizing anything

[andrekandre]

  > we just stop throwing away gigabytes for no reward

jira/confluence and google docs browser tabs are perfect examples... what does a single page need literally gigabytes of data for?

[mindslight]

browser tabs are the perfect examples, period. These things were being done with native widget toolkits twenty years go. Or going back even further, TUI forms. Rich text with straightforward inline graphics is nice, but we're paying an extremely heavy price for it.

Personally I might not even mind so much about the memory except the latency from the garbage collection, swapping, etc absolutely kills interactive performance. My TI-85 had a snappier interactive experience than my "modern" phone.

I think a large part of the problem, at least on the embedded side, is that people really just don't have standards for these things should feel. When I tried out the first gen Nest in a store, my first thought was it was a joke and who would actually buy it with 100ms+ jittery UI lag. But lo and behold, people did.

[rurp]

I would personally love it if efficiency actually became a priority again, but I don't see it happening. Instead we'll get an even more K shaped economy where people with enough money absorb the extra cost without much care, but everyone else will be materially worse off with a slower more limited phone.

Apple has a long history of not caring about budget-concious consumers. I doubt the wealthy decision makers at Apple and other companies are suddenly going to start caring about them now.

[a-french-anon]

You underestimate how poorly optimized Android (both the OS and ecosystem) is.

[AnthonyMouse]

Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser and all the people who just need a phone will buy it to save $200.

Also, when software is poorly optimized that implies it is possible to optimize it.

[xienze]

> Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser

I think we're quite a ways past the point where most people would be satisfied with phones that only do voice, text, and web browsing. People have become quite accustomed to phones that can run arbitrary applications and games. There's quite a sizable population for whom phones are their only computing device.

[AnthonyMouse]

There is nothing stopping it from running arbitrary applications, those applications just wouldn't be Android apps. Which is just as well because 99% of Android apps are just a bloated skin over a web page anyway.

I can't actually think of the last time that I wanted to (rather than was forced to) use a non-messaging non-browser app on my phone.

[ChildOfChaos]

Because you need these apps to do almost anything.

I went to a music festival last weekend, ticket has to be on the ticketmaster app which is android or iOS, the official app for the festival has timings and updates for the event which are very important else you will miss stuff that is announced, even safety warnings.

My train tickets were on the app, I needed it to book the Uber as well.

20% off drinks and food if you use the paypal app. You just can't do things without Android or iOS.

Thousands of people parked in random fields, parked in daylight, need to find car at night = Airtag/ map.

Everything is an app these days. It's a lot harder to do everything without such things. You wouldn't have been able to attend without such a device.

[citrin_ru]

Web browsing is the most resource intensive task given how bloated modern websites are. It’s easer to imagine a cheap phone with a set of optimised native apps but the problem is tech giants are not interested in reducing footprint of their apps at the same time actively hostile to 3rd party clients.

[ethbr1]

> given how bloated modern websites are. It’s easer to imagine a cheap phone with a set of optimised native apps

The age old truism in tech is that it's easier to hyper-optimize a single chokepoint (i.e. the platform) than trust distributed actors to each optimize their own thing (i.e. app developers).

Because optimization takes money. Sometimes lots. And distributed non-platform actors have their own priorities like features.

That's why you get enormous success stories like x86, TCP/IP, HTTPx, and Javascript engines providing increased performance, but the "developers as a whole self-optimize" dream remains a perpetual mirage.

(Outside of gaming console hardware, and even there arguably true before middleware)

[IshKebab]

For a start, most of the world does not use text messages. They use WhatsApp. (Apart from a few countries where WeChat, Telegram or Line are more popular.) As far as I know the US is the only country that still uses SMS/RCS.

[AnthonyMouse]

So write a WhatsApp client for your phone and convince the EU to make them interoperate with you.

[IshKebab]

Unfortunately that EU WhatsApp interoperation thing isn't really what we wanted. I assumed it would mean that you would be able to communicate with WhatsApp contacts using a non-WhatsApp app (kind of like Pidgin back in the day).

Meta obviously don't want that and they've done a sneaky thing to make it useless: if you connect a third party app to WhatsApp, from that third party app you can only chat with other WhatsApp contacts that have also connected the same third party app to WhatsApp. So if you write your own WhatsApp client that runs on this low power phone it will be completely useless because to chat with your friends they would all have to manually connect their WhatsApps to your client, which of course they won't do.

See https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability... - check the `WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability User Experience - Android`

I guess we'll see if the EU lets this stand but my guess is they will.

[mort96]

I don't use WhatsApp, I use Signal, Messenger, iMessage and Snapchat (yes I know but these things have inertia). I'm not exactly alone here. You'd need to write third-party clients for all those apps as well.

[lynndotpy]

I was about to say this already exists, but Meta discontinued the KaiOS client a year ago.

For all the EU does right, it's amazing that a reviled United States conglomerate owns their entire social sphere. I hope they can change that and show the world a model of how to do so, especially given how high the stakes are.

[rjsw]

Meta had a perfectly fine WhatsApp client for KaiOS phones, they disabled it.

[TFNA]

As already pointed out, your awareness is very geographically limited. In my country (and in a few others I’m familiar with), what I most need a smartphone for is as the obligatory second factor for strong authentication to all kinds of services both governmental and private. That’s done through a bank app that only runs on Android. Elsewhere, people might find that their local public transportation or similar things can only be paid using an app.

[patapong]

But haven't you heard, software is solved?

"Make this OS and ecosystem more efficient. Make no mistakes."

[lynndotpy]

Moore's lesser known cousin predicted this as Leslie's Law. Accounting for cost, Moore's law has practically jumped backwards in time over 15 years in the past six months.

[dist-epoch]

As the HN saying goes, people who can't afford an iPhone or a MacBook will not be your paying customers anyway, so don't worry about them.

[type0]

> nd people will have to write software that uses memory efficiently (the horror).

Not possible since we all "need" AI in our phones

[stein1946]

How much cheaper will a phone with 2gb vs one with 4gb? What changes in the supply chain?

[krieger_857]

10 to 30 usd aprox

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Glad me and my wife both bought a pixel 1 year ago, see you in 6 years! Lol

[kjshsh123]

>The Alchian–Allen effect was described in 1964 by Armen Alchian and William R Allen in the book University Economics (now called Exchange and Production[1]). It states that when the prices of two substitute goods, such as high and low grades of the same product, are both increased by a fixed per-unit amount such as a transportation cost or a lump-sum tax, consumption will shift toward the higher-grade product. This is because the added per-unit amount decreases the relative price of the higher-grade product.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchian%E2%80%93Allen_effect?w...

[ksec]

My bet is that all iPhone across the range will increase the price by $100.

iPhone Ultra $1699

iPhone Pro Max $1199 iPhone Pro $1099

iPhone Air 2 $999

iPhone 18 (2027) $899

iPhone 17 $799 ( Same Price )

iPhone 17e $599 ( Same Price )

And there won't be an 18e. Or May be an 18e at $699.

[frollogaston]

I'd expect the iPhone price hikes to be less even in absolute $ than with the cheap phones. iPhones already had relatively large margins (as a %) for the newly increased costs to partially eat into.

[Maakuth]

Why would you expect Apple to give up their margin? The DRAM price hikes affect every smartphone vendor, even Samsung through opportunity cost. That means the competition will also need to hike their prices. And the competition has lower margin, so they have less choice here.

[frollogaston]

Because Apple's main competition is themselves a few years ago, when they sold an iPhone or whatever to a happy customer who might return for an upgrade even though it still works. Not many people are switching platforms nowadays.

[ben_w]

> Why would you expect Apple to give up their margin?

Price go up, demand go down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand#/media/File:...

(The iPhone is only a premium brand, not a Veblen good).

[frollogaston]

That's if iPhone costs go up and there are no other changes. As the parent said, competitors' products are also going up in price. I just don't consider the products interchangeable enough. Apple has its margins for a reason.

Also even if they had pure competitors, demand for high-end smartphones is pretty elastic. People will really just buy fewer phones if they get more expensive.

[close04]

There's a limit to what even a wealthy customer can stomach. They need to consider what costs them more, Apple eating $50-$100 of the cost, or people holding on to an iPhone one year longer than usual.

These announcements have another effect of boosting sales now. Summer is usually a sales slump so selling more now is probably good for Apple.

[FireBeyond]

The schedule is predictable now but in case you forget, you can always tell when the new iPhone is right around the corner because AT&T starts spamming your email and SMS with 'reminders' that you can get an iPhone 17 right now! Or for Father's Day! Or because you're eligible for an upgrade! Or...!

[frollogaston]

Only $1/mo for an iPhone 17 Pro Max! (With eligible trade-in of iPhone 16 Pro Max, on postpaid plan only)

[FireBeyond]

Gotta get rid of as much of that stock as possible, but keep collecting 16s to harvest for repair (not that I object to improving repairability ,per se)!

[theturtletalks]

Apple has services and the App Store that still collects 30%. I don’t think they will raise iPhones prices by much but rumors say the iPhone Foldable is coming and that will be $2K+. People will pay it and that will subsidize the other models.

[jauntywundrkind]

We'll see what happens but I wouldn't be shocked or offended if China obliges the state-sponsored memory makers to support other local industry, beyond AI. The consumer electronics world shutting down would be immensely bad, for China, and for many: someone steering us all away from this path seems highly advisable for everyone.

Toms Hardware just put out an article talking about this, although they focused more on ssd and memory stick makers. The principle ought apply quite broadly though. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/chinese-make...

[halJordan]

This is already the case in several African countries (cheap phones are no longer cheap, and sales drop precipitously)

[brailsafe]

> But that cheap $200 chinese smartphones will need have to hike prices by about the same amount, which will decimate that market.

Hmm. Even if iPhone users can theoretically stomach the increase, they have many other options available, whereas if the cheap $200 phones are the bottom of the market, there's no other real options.

I'm in the ~$450 USD Pixel range atm, and never buy the current flagship or anything. If that increases by $200, I'll look to the used market for the same phone. I really don't care that much about it, and it mostly acts as a fancy 5g modem for tethering. Plenty of younger people are already reverting to more primitive phones or physical media, and I wonder if it's just older addicted richer millenials that'll keep buying at even more than the already idiotic prices.

[teiferer]

> Plenty of younger people are already reverting to more primitive phones

That's an effect that has always been claimed (younger generations rejecting new tech and going offline/low-tech/anti-...) but it's never been more than a minor very temporary fad. In the mid to long term, younger people are always at the forefront of tech adoption and it would be very surprising if it was different this time.

[brailsafe]

Frankly I don't think I've ever heard of this being claimed for prior generations at a scale that any other generation would notice. There was always that kid who kept their CD collection or their dumbphone longer than most, but it was more of a niche thing to do. That said, I don't wholly disagree that it's a fad, time will tell.

Considering there hasn't really been (to my knowledge) other instances where involvement of media and technology has been remotely as intense as now from day one in a kid's life, it doesn't seem like any prior time period would be as likely to produce a sense of repulsion as now. Sure, I didn't carry my Gen X relative's obsession with television into my adult life, but something like that I'd consider to be a bit of a tenuous comparison to make to the breadth of insidious mind-altering media delivery conduits we're constantly exposed to now.

[cm2187]

I can't tell the difference between a 5 years old smartphone model and the latest generation.

[mrweasel]

For the average consumer, I'd argue that any phone made in the past 10+ years would be absolutely fine.

It issues are: battery life/battery replacement, lack of updates, developers targeting newer devices only.

In Apples case a good solution would be to rollback at least part of the liquid glass UI updates, as it severely affects older devices. Then announce upfront that every Apple phone will be supported for no less than 10 years after the device was removed from the market. That would be good for everyone, except Apple shareholders.

I understand that Apple pricing, compared to inflation haven't changed that much since the first iPhone, but for many of us it really does push the limit. I simply do not get enough value to justify purchasing a new iPhone, or in many cases a second hand one. My perceived value peaked around the iPhone 7 era, everything after is pointless. Apple doesn't really cater to my needs, and that's their choice, I just feel a bit stuck.

[frollogaston]

I do use an iPhone 6S. The hardware is fine, but I basically can't install apps because they all target newer OSes that can't be installed on it, and the older versions of those apps available are broken.

[brailsafe]

I think that's the unfortunate cycle of iOS and iPadOS. Their hardware more or less served its purpose eons ago and there's little reason why it couldn't still, aside from OS compatibility. Even as a mac user, I've only ever purchased on iOS product, and that was the iPad 3. No subsequent iPad seems to have introduced anything more compelling than what the iPad 3 was capable of (which wasn't much), so as the software compatibility story has degraded over time, it still sits here serving as an occasional epub reader. It would feel bizarre to spend thousands on a new one to effectively be able to do what I did with it in ~2012.

My android phones eventually run their course due to excessive physical damage, theft, etc.. but since I've never paid much for them, it's usually not so disruptive to just pay a few hundred and get something used or basic to replace it, or order a new screen and repair it.

[teiferer]

I'm with you on that, but that's not the point.

It's about what role tech plays in life. The claim that young people are increasingly detoxing and embracing offline life is just not true. More than any earlier generation, being online to stay in touch with friends and the general happenings of the world is integral to most young folks life. The same thing will happen with AI chats.

My grandma rarely uses google in her life. My mom uses it rather often. To my generation it's the portal to knowledge background for most of what I do. (Substitute any search engine for google if you must.) Similar with instagram, instant messanging etc. AI chatbots will go that way too and so will the next trend.

[brailsafe]

> I'm with you on that, but that's not the point.

The point was that if there was a time when people who'd otherwise be buying the latest smartphones for relatively mundane purposes—spending arbitrary amounts of money for them—would balk at the idea, that time could be now. Nothing to do with chatbots.

Money is tight, jobs are scarce; for many people on their way into college or even in the middle of what would be their career, there isn't a clear answer to the question of whether the current tech landscape is anything but a threat to one's future or their mental health.

Seems like kind of an anecdote vs anecdote situation where I see people cutting back severely on their exposure and being more frugal or retro, and you don't, which is fine, but I'm not doing anything more than speculating at hypothetical future behavior based on real world conditions and what I've seen.

There's simply not much required from a hardware standpoint to facilitate multi-modal communication patterns if someone's practicing a limited-exposure relationship with tech.

[y2244]

That's why Apple changed the lense layout and introduced new colours in latest iPhone!

[yieldcrv]

If the smartphone is not economically viable, it will go away

Apple’s margin targets aside, the prices are rational

Trendy teens and 20 something’s still have iPhones, many just also have point and shoot cameras. This is more of a desire to be present in some contexts alongside aesthetics (of the photos and the gear), than a rejection of having 2 teraflops in their pocket.

It’s important to understand the why

[high_na_euv]

>Plenty of younger people are already reverting to more primitive phones or physical media

Id love to know how many of em

[SllX]

Not enough to have stopped the iPhone 17 Pro line from being a runaway success that even Apple—famously excellent at projecting demand and already invested in selling as many as possible given its the flagship model line of their flagship product line—completely underestimated the demand at launch.

I’d love to know how much “plenty” in the parent’s perspective stacks up against just this one individual model line and whether it is at all distinguishable from noise.

[brailsafe]

Surprising amount of hostility to what was a speculative anecdotal observation. I'd be surprised if many people under the age of 17 would be buying a $2000+ phone anyway, but given tough economic situations, decreasing opportunity, and decreasing stability, the likelihood seems low that significantly increased prices for effectively the same (boring) product would be absorbed by anyone other than the richest or older established crowd. Whether it holds true at global level, or in your social circle, I don't know.

[SllX]

Well let’s see:

> Plenty of younger people are already reverting to more primitive phones or physical media, and I wonder if it's just older addicted richer millenials that'll keep buying at even more than the already idiotic prices.

You don’t sell as many iPhones as Apple does if your market is only as narrow as “older addicted richer millennials” and your most expensive products in your flagship lines don’t fly off the shelves if they’re not already at some level of affordability. Under today’s prices, and this is due to change per Tim Cook’s comments of course, but under today’s prices the iPhone Pro line starts at $1099 and $1199 for the Pro & Pro Max line specifically, which you can get down by trading in an older phone, looking for a deal (prices in the channel are often discounted by $100 or so below Apple’s list price) and can be financed through either the carrier or Apple.

Now you can get that price up to $1999 if you specifically go for the Pro Max 2TB option, but the existence of a 2TB option doesn’t mean that’s the default option for most people. You can also get that price as low as $599 if you forego the flagship models entirely, and again, that’s Apple’s list prices, not necessarily prices in the channel.

I think your frugality is great, and if there’s some young people behaving more frugally, that’s also great. I haven’t upgraded my phone in about 5 years and don’t anticipate doing so this year either, but your remarks don’t read like they were sourced from real observations of either the American or the International markets, and in fact read like an eye-rolling generalization about millennials. Such as this:

> the likelihood seems low that significantly increased prices for effectively the same (boring) product would be absorbed by anyone other than the richest or older established crowd

1) we don’t know what Apple’s prices are going up to yet. They haven’t announced any actual price increases, so we also don’t know how significant the price increase will be. Naturally we should expect sales to be hurt by any price increase, but it’s a bit premature to overstate their significance.

2) their most recent iPhones were not so boring that they didn’t fly off the shelves at a pace Apple couldn’t anticipate because they sold well above expectations, and that is specifically the flagship models. Now it often follows that the following year’s model is more “boring” by comparison, but the view you take their new products is not borne by market evidence.

[10729287]

It's a a marginal trend, mainly for the gram.

[brailsafe]

I'd be curious as well.

[mindslight]

Apple sure is lucky that the supply chains for those low end Chinese phones are in a country that is notoriously bad at building new manufacturing capacity and prioritizing their own industry </s>