Apple to Mark Smartphone Anniversary With ‘iPhone X’ Premium Handset

There has been market talk that the S8 will also have a Plus version that will be slightly larger than the popular, but fire-prone, Galaxy Note7. Apparently the idea is to get rid of the Note name, to help consumers forget about the recalled Note7.

Samsung, of course, has had wireless charging, OLED displays, and a wrap-around screen for some time. Apple won’t have it for four or five months after the S8 ships. If it weren’t for Apple’s loyal fan base, this would be a huge problem for Apple.

Besides the premium features, Apple’s new flagship smartphone will carry a premium price, reportedly above $1,000. While this is not as big a jump as it may seem since a fully configured iPhone 7 Plus already costs just under that amount, the fact is that Samsung is also less expensive. Somewhere along the line, Apple is going to run out of price elasticity and this may be the time.

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IPhone X

While there are certainly some celebrities who want to have the paparazzi catch them with their new iPhone 8 phones, most people aren’t celebrities, don’t have entourages, and many of them will think $1,000 is a lot of money for a mobile phone—especially since you can purchase a MacBook for less than that.

This may also be the point where Samsung and other smartphone makers are able to demonstrate that buying Apple just because it’s from Apple isn’t necessarily a rational decision. As cool as the new top-end iPhone may be, the company still has to compete on the basis of value. This could mean that the models that sell the best are the iPhone 7S and 7S Plus, while the iPhone X is there to get attention and be a status symbol.

Of course, the iPhone is already a status symbol to some extent, and people are willing to pay a premium for that. But the next question has to be whether status will stretch to the point where a phone is worth over a grand.

Of course it may be that there’s something that Apple is planning that makes the flagship iPhone worth that much, but which isn’t known now.

The all-glass case will certainly be swanky, the edge-to-edge display will be useful and maybe the wireless charging will be fast enough to really set it apart. I hope Tim Cook surprises us when he announces the new phone in September, but right now it’s hard to see what that surprise might be.

Originally published on eWeek

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