MANILA - Where Apple goes, the industry follows. While late to the all-screen game, the iPhone X signalled aggressive pricing that outpaces the upgrades that are starting to get more iterative than revolutionary.
Samsung priced its 256 gigabyte S9 Plus, unveiled on Monday, at P60,990, P13,990 short of the P73,990 iPhone X with the same capacity.
A minimum wage earner in Metro Manila will have to toil for 129 days to buy the top end S9, if he doesn't spend for food or transportation for 4 months and works on weekends. And that's 30 more days if he wants the highest capacity iPhone X.
But flagship mobile tech is for luxury, not for utility. In the same vein, designer handbags can cost twice or thrice as much as an iPhone.
For the 10th anniversary edition of its most important device, Apple offered face unlock in place of fingerprint scanning, unicorn and poop animations mapped to the user's face, and portrait effects that simulate different types of lighting.
Despite Apple's knack for making new technologies accessible to the masses with clever branding, the features that were supposed to justify the price tag were unfinished. Face ID was not as reliable as Touch ID, Animoji was a novelty that was bound to iOS, and Portrait Lighting looked like paper cutouts.
For the S9, Samsung is promising 60 percent brighter images in low light compared to the S8, super slow motion to add drama to footage of free falls, flapping bird wings and bursting balloons. It is also challenging Animoji with AR Emoji, complete with a boxy fish character that looks like Pixar's Dory.
We have yet to spend enough time with the S9 to judge whether or not the price bump is justified. But the S9 is the same price as last year's larger S8+ when it was launched. This year's S9+ with 64GB of storage is priced at P52,990, P7,000 more expensive than its predecessor and P3,000 pricier than the larger Galaxy Note 8 from barely 5 months ago.
Chinese upstarts are also challenging Apple and Samsung with comparable, if not better performance, at roughly half the price. Huawei's Mate 10 Pro retails for P38,990 and offers free screen replacement in case of breakage, something that will cost you if you wreck your iPhone X.
Disruptor OnePlus is offering its flagship killer officially in the Philippines. If you can live without water resistance and a design that looks like the iPhone 7 Plus, the OnePlus 5T offers a full screen display, fast performance, 64GB of onboard storage and long battery life starting at P26,990.
China's Xiaomi also opened its first official store in the Philippines, undercutting Apple and Samsung in terms of flagship price, while offering devices for the connected home including WiFi routers, desktops and laptops.
Smartphones are also becoming more and more expensive when the battle has begun to shift to software from hardware.
What Google's Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL lacks in terms of looks, it makes up for with slick software and an AI-powered camera that does with a single lens what it's competition can't do, even with two lenses.
At this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, LG offered the V30 from late last year with upgraded internals, including double the storage and an AI-backed camera. It did not unveil a successor to the G6, which launched at the same gadget showcase last year, signaling a rethink in its mobile strategy.
Mobile phone sales worldwide were down 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter last year, the same period the iPhone X and Galaxy Note 8 went on sale, according to industry tracker IDC.
While manufacturers are pushing the limit in terms of pricing, consumers hit the pause button and were in no rush to upgrade, IDC said.
The iPhone X cost as much as P90,000 in the grey market when it first hit the Philippines. It now costs as low as P55,000 in unofficial stores after less than four months.
For those with gadget lust, price is not a consideration. But for the practical consumer, the choices are at their most varied.
And with the tech companies looking at AI powered devices that will replace the smartphone, forking out an insane amount for something that will suffer the inevitable fate of the typewriter in a few years is getting more difficult each year.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
