As I was rushing to my gate at Sydney airport I passed by an Apple store. It didn’t escape my eyes that they had a sign up to say that the new iPhone XS was available for sale today itself. Australia is one of the first countries to get the latest iPhones and yesterday was the first day.
I thought of my parents. Both are iPhone users and my Dad has been using an iPhone for 2 years. My mom’s on the other hand is about 4 years old. I quickly decided to buy them each an iPhone XS. An iPhone XS for my mom and XS Max for my Dad. The total bill was something along the lines of RM11K or something.
When I got home later that night, my parents were in town so I gave them both the phones. My Dad was happy and gladly accepted it because he’d been thinking about changing his phone. My mom on the other hand protested strongly. She agreed that her phone badly needed a change (lots of features stopped working) but she insisted on buying an older version iPhone itself. She felt this iPhone XS was too expensive.
I don’t disagree with her. iPhones have gone up so much in price in the past couple of years that it’s just gotten really ridiculous. I no longer find it in myself to be able to buy an iPhone especially when other phones are so much cheaper. I currently use a Huawei P20 Pro which cost me only RM2.8K (and comes with free powerbank and all sorts of accessories) and it’s an awesome phone. It has every high end feature I could expect. It has a really awesome camera, finger print, face unlock, great size and screen, big battery… everything! And it only cost me RM2.8K.
Full disclosure, years ago I used to be a Huawei ambassador but for the past year I haven’t been. I bought my Huawei P20 Pro myself and even though I no longer work with the brand, my personal opinion is that it’s awesome. It’s a good value for money phone.
So when I’m used to paying RM2.8K for a top spec phone, the stretch to pay what… RM7K for a top of the spec iPhone XS Max is really too far. I can get over buying it for my Dad and my Mom because they’re used to iOS and don’t want to go through the learning curve of Android. But for myself… it’s just too much money to pay.
I’m getting messages from people now asking why not I just use it myself. Well the truth is that… it’s just way out of my budget of what I would pay for a phone. There are just other things I’d rather buy with the difference I would have to pay in price.
The good news is that I kinda just convinced my mom to just take the phone. She was looking at the iPhone 8 Plus 256GB which costs about RM3.6K. I worked out the math for her and based on a 4 year depreciation of the phone, she’s better off just taking the iPhone XS I bought her. Even when it comes to value for money and since she’s only limited to iPhones.
I think iPhones are a great phone and I admire Apple’s ability to price phones so highly and still drive demand. I just fell out of their market with the prices they charge for their latest phones. That and that I like an Android phone because it works well with my Google Home.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space