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Comment by walthamstow

9 days ago

Approx 2/3rds of Americans pay Apple monthly for storage, according to consumer research.

Original source is paywalled but lifted quotes here:

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/08/21/cirp-survey-apple-i...

The smallest one is the cheapest, it's basic economics to assume that it sells the best. I would guess 60%+ buy the smallest, and I don't even need to look at data. You're welcome to disprove me.

The popularity of the storage subscription is basically why Apple is a $4tn company.

I don't know that I buy your basic economics theory. Starter prices are a thing to get people in the door and upsell them later. According to [0], the iphone 17 pro has a larger share than the regular 17, although it's more expensive.

And, again, paying for cloud storage doesn't automatically mean that they do it because their local storage is too small for their needs. Apple pushed iCloud as a solution to safely back up your stuff, and I doubt nobody bought into this angle.

[0] https://telemetrydeck.com/survey/apple/iPhone/models/

  • > Starter prices are a thing to get people in the door and upsell them later.

    Yes, with services such as storage.

    • I very much doubt that. I just checked the apple store page for an iphone 17. They try to sell me the larger storage model, they try to sell me apple care, but I don't see anything related to icloud. If I look at the pro, they try to sell me the max.

      The difference between a 512 GB and a 256 GB non-pro model is 250 Euros. The 200 GB icloud subscription (which, again, they don't talk about when buying an iphone) costs 2.99 Euros a month. Break even is in seven years. I bet many phones don't actually last that long. If you look at a 2TB plan (which doesn't have an equivalent phone) the break-even is 2 years.

      It makes no sense to try to sell the cheaper iPhone in the hope that I'll buy some icloud storage, since they actually leave money on the table. Looking at pro models, the difference between the base 256 + 2TB icloud and 2 TB model has an even longer break-even period!

      So, basically, it looks actually cheaper to get a smaller phone + icloud than a bigger one.

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