Pricey iPhone X punctuates new technological swagger

APPLE has made a luxury iPhone that punctuates its technological swagger with a high-priced exclamation point. And that exclamation point appears to be a sign of things to come.

The long-anticipated iPhone X unveiled on Tuesday will sell for $999 (R12 966), double the original iPhone cost a decade ago and more than any other competing device on the market. That’s much in line with Apple’s long-term positioning of itself as a purveyor of aspirational gadgets.

It is also a clear sign that Apple is ramping up that strategy by continuing to push its prices higher, even though improvements it’s bringing to its products are often incremental or derivative. That runs contrary to decades in which high-tech device prices have fallen over time, often dramatically.

On Tuesday, for instance, Apple also introduced a TV streaming box that will sell for $179, far more than similar devices, and a smartwatch with its own cellular connection that will cost almost pricey $400. In December, Apple will start selling an internet-connected speaker, the HomePod, priced at $349, nearly twice as much as Amazon’s market-leading Echo speaker.

Price

Apple is also raising the price of its runner-up phones, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, which will respectively cost $50 and $30 more than their immediate predecessors, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.

The premium pricing strategy reflects Apple’s longheld belief that consumers will pay more for products that are so well designed they can’t fathom living without them.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook left little doubt in the company’s confidence in the iPhone X (pronounced “ten”), whose name references the decade that’s passed since company co-founder Steve Jobs first pulled out an iPhone that sold for $499.

Cook attempted to frame the iPhone X as a similar breakthrough, hailing it as “the biggest leap forward” since the original iPhone.

But the original iPhone revolutionised society by putting connected hand-held computers and apps into the hands of millions of ordinary people. The iPhone X mostly promises to do what earlier smartphones have done, only better.

The technological wizardry in the iPhone X is unquestionably impressive. It includes a bright new edgeto-edge screen, a special artificial-intelligence-enabled chip, new sensors for facial recognition and a grab-bag of fun items like animated emojis that mimic your expressions, portrait-mode selfies that blur the background, and an augmented reality game platform. – AP