Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “On the iPhone With No Charger…”.
[ Applause, ], [ Applause, ], hey what is up guys, mkbhd here, okay, so there’s this rumor floating around uh, confirmed at some various levels by some pretty reliable sources of the iphone 12, not coming with a charger or headphones at all in the box when they Come out in september this year now to be clear, i think there are way more interesting, other rumors about the iphone 12 floating around out there right now. But this is the one. That’S gotten the most interesting reactions because it is so polarizing one way or the other, and i don’t usually do this, but i kind of want. Let’S just assume this rumor is true, because i want to go over those two different reactions because they’re so fascinating.
To me right now, so reaction number one which is probably the first one that popped up in your head, which is what the iphone’s not going to ship with a charger. That seems ridiculous, like that’s. That’S ridiculous even to apple levels, of ridiculous, like we’ve seen them do some pretty out there questionable stuff in the past, like the headphone jack, the the laptop port situation, all kinds of things, and even maybe getting rid of the headphones in the box. We could understand, but the charging, cable and the power brick they are like the only necessary accessories. Those are the things you have to have in the box like that would be like shipping a car with no wheels or like a a computer with no power cable. I don’t know it just seems ridiculous that you’d be able to buy something, especially that expensive and it has some battery out the box sure.
So you can use it and set it up, but then, as soon as it dies you would have to spend extra to get it working again. So it’s just optically. It just looks like pure greed, removing something from the box.
That’S always been there classic apple, creating a problem and then selling you. The solution, it’ll probably be another 20 30 bucks to go. Get that charger after you need it. Actually, i think i even said this on twitter, but i was like, i don’t think.
We’Ve ever seen that before have we ever ever seen a phone ship without a charger in the box. I don’t think we’ve ever seen that the charger is necessary, but then here is reaction. Number two yeah, whatever matter of fact, good the iphone doesn’t actually really need to ship with the charger anymore, there’s already about five different chargers, sitting around most houses anyway and hey when i get a new phone, usually the things that i leave in the box are The paperwork and then the default headphones and charger because i have my own now. Not everybody has my situation.
Obviously, but the point is most people buying an iphone already have an iphone charger, that’s as good as the one that they were going to include in the box anyway. But then, on top of that at the iphone’s scale, which is huge, the e-waste savings would be absolutely massive, there’s actually a great article, i already tweeted by dieter at the verge it’s linked below, where they go deeper into this. But basically they spoke with the ceo of anker, who notes that chargers built into the box that people end up throwing away are a gigantic source of e-waste and if you include smartphones and tablets and laptops and power drills, even basically, all these built-in chargers when they Get thrown away you’re, probably looking at 300 000 tons of e-waste per year, tons 300 000 tons of waste every year, so the iphone shipping, without a power brick that most people already have, would take a pretty big chunk out of that. That’S just facts, and then you know what to take it.
A step. Further efficiency also goes way up because now, instead of having to ship the phone and the earpods and the charger in the box, really all you have to ship to people is the phone and a little bit of that paperwork, and the iphone’s box is already one Of the smaller boxes in the industry year after year, but getting rid of those accessories could cut the footprint, basically in half making it one of the smallest meaning they can fit more on every truck and on every plane and again at that scale. That means real environmental impact, plus how apple would that be right? This is our this is our thinnest box ever so uh. You know what good riddance it would be: a better smartphone world if apple stopped shipping, the charger okay.
So in reality, my take is i’m i’m actually somewhere in between these two places, because it is a little bit more nuanced than that. Obviously, if they just remove the charger from the box, that would have been nice to have that’s just going to seem like a negative, but there are some other things that could also happen. At the same time, this is pretty dynamic. What, if they’re able to adjust the price of the iphone, see naturally, one of the most popular reactions to they’re not going to ship it with a charger and headphones was okay? Well then, you better not charge me the same price as the phone that came with those things.
So if we look up here, the typical basic charger on amazon right now with a brick would cost about 15 bucks. That’S about equal to what apple was gon na ship, so you take 15 bucks off the price of the iphone now you’re at 985 and then a typical basic pair of headphones in the box. If you actually try to get those from apple right now, they’ll charge, you 30 bucks, obviously they’re not worth that much, but for the sake of argument, go ahead and take 30, more bucks off of the price of the iphone and now you’re down to 9.55.
Now, if you’re thinking about what apple might do when seeing that you’d think, maybe they would just round it back up to a thousand right, how many customers were we gon na have at 950 that we wouldn’t have at a thousand not that many right, but then Again, apple has lowered the price of the iphone before the iphone 11. You might not remember, but very recently, the iphone 10r launched at 750 bucks. Then the next year the iphone 11 launched at 700.. So there is precedent, for it. Apple has lowered the price of the iphone before and then i think it would make it a bit more tolerable if they also offered on top of that, a discount for people who do want to add back a new pair of headphones or a new charging.
Brick to the purchase of their new iphone, so really this would be more like shipping uh, a camera without the lens and if you’ve ever bought a dslr you’ll know most of them ship without any lens, even though a lens is a necessary accessory for the camera To be useful at all, and that’s because most people buying one already have the lenses that they’re going to use or if they don’t, they can get a discount on a basic kit lens that can come with it. To get you started just like apple could offer a discount on a basic basic charger that they would include with the iphone. But you know just like the people who already have like five or six fancy lenses, that they’re gon na use with the new dslr there’s gon na be people who buy the new iphone that already have much nicer chargers than the one apple was gon na ship. With the box like a fast charger, for example, or a wireless charger, so those people don’t need the kit lens in the dslr box and those people don’t need the built-in slow charger that they’re just going to throw away and waste in the iphone box.
But yeah. That’S that’s really it because at the end of the day, i think the most interesting part of this is how is apple gon na spin? It because you know apple people are always sitting waiting to write that negative headline about what apple’s going to do and there’s also people waiting to write that positive headlines. So the question is: we’ve seen apple, basically conduct a master class over the years and tilting the way people view their products through different lenses. So how are they going to do it with this, like we, we saw the the headphone jack a couple couple years ago.
It was one of those things where it seemed pretty ridiculous. That apple was gon na get rid of like a simple small super, useful port, and there are still people to this day, who think that’s ridiculous, but just a year or two. After all, these major companies were making fun of them for it, they were all copying them, and now today, it’s hard to find a phone with a headphone jack, that’s comparable to the iphone, not saying that’s good or bad, but that’s a very similar situation. So i think, there’s two ways that this could go number one is apple, doesn’t say anything about it at all. They don’t even mention it on stage. They don’t talk about it, they’re sort of trying to avoid another pro stand moment on stage the visa mount adapter. Will be 199 and the pro stand 9.99 and like the mac pro they’ll all be available in this in the fall ah like who would want to relive that again by saying there’s no charger in the box, so they don’t talk about it at all. It starts to ship and then it slowly gets uncovered by customers and then then you start to see probably a lot of headlines about how apple didn’t mention that, which is why i think number two is actually more likely.
I think they just go straight at it from the environmental angle, and this is something not everyone even cares that much about or notices, but i don’t know if you’ve watched every keynote, but lately apple every time they unveil a new hardware product will always have a Slide about this, which is how environmentally friendly that they’re saying their manufacturing process is it’s always every year right before they get to the price. They always show this slide, so you could see them really leaning into it. You know with going the next level and not including the unnecessary charger and cables in the box and saving thousands of tons of e-waste in a single year during the process like you could see, the the apple bloggers writing defending that right now, if apple really fully Truly cared deeply about. You know the environmental impact they would better support, user repair or or here’s a crazy idea make the iphone usb type-c.
So we don’t need two different types of chargers every time, but you know that’s, that’s probably a whole different video, but that that is that’s my guess, for how i think apple would be able to spin, not shipping the accessory they’ve always shipped with the iphone. The only one that’s actually necessary to use it with the phone this year now, one last point made in an article by mg siegler also linked below uh in case. The question is, why didn’t they do it last year or why are they picking this year to transition the iphone to not having a charger? Is this just a greedy 20 20 move? Is this a margins thing? Is this uh 5g modems in the new iphone will cost more, so they need a way to make those margins back. What what is it about this year – and i think the answer might also include that the next next iphone, the iphone 12s or 13, whatever it ends up being in 2021, is rumored to not have any ports at all. It’S rumored to be the completely portless, no lightning, no usbc, no port, all wireless iphone, and so this might be a move just one year earlier to get people used to the idea of not having a charger in the box so that the next year, when the Incredibly, premium portless iphone, that is apple’s goal. Finally, ships they’re used to it already something to think about, but either way it’s all.
This is all the rumor we’re talking about. Like i said, i generally don’t do this talking extensively about something that might not even happen, but this is something i’m going to be paying attention to, and maybe you can leave your thoughts below on what you think apple’s move should be for the iphone that comes Out this year again, will they spin it? How will they defend not having a charger in the iphone 12 box? Let me know what you think, thanks for watching catch, you guys in the next one peace .