I was thinking recently how Bill Gates often said the biggest competitor to Windows was the previous version of Windows. Alternate OSes didn't have enough market share or compatible software to really be a threat, but customers always had the option of just not upgrading.
iPhone seems in a very similar position. Sure, there are some people who will switch from iPhone to an Android phone. But Apple's biggest challenge seems to be convincing their current customers they need a new phone at all.
They've long solved that challenge. After a few generations of phone (read: a few years), all new iOS upgrades simply refuse to install on your old phone. Then, after a short while, your apps auto-upgrade themselves and then stop working, one by one, because they won't run on such an old iOS. You then have no choice but to buy a new phone.
I found this out by getting stranded on the side of the road somewhere after I discovered that Uber had auto-upgraded itself in the background, and the new one refused to launch on my old phone.
That's not supposed to happen - Uber must be doing their own OS version detection and not using Apple's supported method to declare the supported APIs. Apple have gone out of their way to add a way to install old versions of apps when the new version has stopped supporting the OS you're using (the developer can even specify in iTunes what versions to serve up for what OSes).
> Apple's biggest challenge seems to be convincing their current customers they need a new phone at all.
That's not much of a challenge for Apple. There is always a laundry list of features that people want but that aren't necessarily mature (e.g. Wireless Charging, NFC, waterproofing) and Apple keeps those in it's back pocket incubating. Occasionally it pulls one out and slaps it on one of their devices to boost sales.
They also drive sales by adding or removing features from their devices (e.g. Firewire 400/800, USB-C/MagSafe, Lightning) or dropping support for legacy systems.
Mechanical failure is also a common reason to upgrade but Apple seems to be cannibalizing this revenue stream by replacing mechanical devices (e.g. switches, buttons, touchpads) with solid state ones that use haptic feedback. I'm curious how that will play out, will Apple's Taptic engine be the point of failure?
They do but it's locked down. They might one day open that up or create peripherals to use it. Similar to how the 3rd or 4th gen iPod Touch magically gained Bluetooth via software updates.
You mean batteries that rarely if ever need replacing (this isn't still the 1990s) and now fewer button to fail (the home button hasn't been a problem anyway for years now anyway)?
iPhone seems in a very similar position. Sure, there are some people who will switch from iPhone to an Android phone. But Apple's biggest challenge seems to be convincing their current customers they need a new phone at all.