Comment by Steko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Steko | Hacker News Reader

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> Apple won't fare as well if they were to be evaluated by an audience unfamiliar with their brand and devices all together.

Haven't they spent the last decade expanding into new markets successfully though? And from what I gather their new customer retention and satisfaction is among the best in the industry.

People like to explain away Apple's success as merely the product of "fanboys" they've had for decades, as though the same 10 million guys who bought the first iphone are somehow responsible for the 50+ million phones apple sells each quarter. The truth is simpler: (1) yes they do have many loyal customers and (2) those customers keep buying Apple products because they have good experiences with them. It's also true that their design priorities are not universal and some are especially ornery for power users. But the idea that their UI design is inherently bad seems off and the fact that people keep copying them [1] seems like the best evidence.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17988564/chinese-phone-s... , money quote: "judging by the accuracy and specificity of the rip-offs, the camera app from iOS 7 has a serious claim to being one of the most influential software designs of the past decade."

> People like to explain away Apple's success as merely the product of "fanboys" they've had for decades, as though the same 10 million guys who bought the first iphone are somehow responsible for the 50+ million phones apple sells each quarter.

Given the world's fashion industry is worth trillions, it will take a more persuasive argument than that to convince me it's not heavily influenced by people's perception of it as a status symbol.

> those customers keep buying Apple products because they have good experiences with them.

Or they've bought into the hype and that's all they experience on a regular basis anymore. My mom has driven a Mercedes for decades. My sister drove a cheaper one as her first car, and recently bought a much nicer one. Even if I wanted to spend that much money on a car, I don't like them, and have always had bad experiences with them. My mom's car was a lemon, in and out of the shop multiple times every year for the first 15 years, until it's been too unreliable to drive on a regular basis the last 5 years.

She's in a market for a new car, and both she and my sister are excited to get her a Mercedes. Their experiences should have driven then away from the brand years ago, but they haven't. Why do you suppose that is? I have my own theories.

Do you mean fashion, or luxury? Fashion and apparel is 1.2 trillion. But that includes clothing, which is a necessary item.

The luxury goods industry, by contrast, is only worth 250 billion.

https://www.statista.com/topics/1110/global-luxury-goods-ind...

I feel your analogy is not very well founded.

> Do you mean fashion, or luxury? Fashion and apparel is 1.2 trillion. But that includes clothing, which is a necessary item.

I was using https://fashionunited.com/global-fashion-industry-statistics, which has slightly different values (but it's likely including labor force).

And yes, I meant fashion, including clothing. Either works in this case, as both are very large numbers, and a large amount of the general apparel category is also carried by brands and brand awareness. Just because it's not Louis Vuitton doesn't mean people aren't opting for the Gap instead of Walmart, Target, or in years past, Kmart because of perceived value and status.

> I feel your analogy is not very well founded.

Feel free to provide a counter example, or explain why the specifics you called out change the point I was trying to express. Maybe you thought what you already provided was self-evident, but I don't see it that way so I don't see how you've provided any evidence that it's not well founded.

> But that includes clothing, which is a necessary item.

In XXI century, in a western country, a smartphone is pretty much a necessary item too. Not on the clothing level yet, but it's definitely not a luxury category.

Most likely some kind of signalling behaviour.

Status signalling is what a particular kind of "rich" person does to indicate they are rich or high value. Often also used to bolster social capital. You see it when women buy extraordinarily expensive designer brand hand bags. Men buying sports cars but have no clue what is under the hood. The key element is not the actual product but the visible cost involved in actually purchasing it - expense as a feature.

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