What concessions has Apple made? Also, what other products has Apple raised the price on when they released a new one?
Carrier-locked phones come to mind. The iPhone used to be totally unlocked, at least in every other country, and now (just to grab an example) in Canada every carrier that carries the iPhone now has a phone that's locked into that carrier.
Now let's look at the tech side of things. I'm going to take this from an article that explains it fairly well and is a lot faster than trying to type it out.
On the Q1 earnings call, acting CEO Tim Cook said the current structure of handset sales was "poorly constructed", and that Apple would try to "innovate" and provide "clever" solutions to the market. Several projects have pointed to a world where iPhones and iPads would be easily transferable between networks, and the customer relationship would be with Apple – not the cellco. A dual-mode phone or tablet that could span GSM and CDMA, using a chip such as Qualcomm's Gobi, for instance; the idea for an integrated SIM card which could be remotely activated by Apple, not the operator, as floated in Europe last year – even an Apple MVNO.
All these would break down the ties between the mobile consumer and the cellco – but none of them showed up in the iPad 2. Indeed, in some markets the new tablet made more nods to the operators' interests than the first one.
We're both familiar with the AT&T iPhone and that Verizon now has their own version of the iPhone, but the lack of a Gobi-type feature being included in, say, the VeriPhone or the iPad 2 means these remain locked into their respective carriers. That's not a concession?
Canada – where users could previously switch between the cellcos with a simple microSIM swap – there are now specific models tied to each of the three supporting operators. This is likely to be repeated in other markets, especially as cellcos, particularly in Europe, start to subsidise iPads and compete to offer special deals, cellphone-style.
These are carefully-crafted, consumer-transparent maneuvers to please the carriers who are moving more and more to Android phones to flush out their portfolios of phones, rather than continuing to slip into bed with Apple.
So, as more and more users get disillusioned with Apple and the slow growth of the hardware when they see Android phones and tablets rocketing into the stars with speed and features and, let's face it, models to fit individuals instead of Apples one-side-kinda-fits-all approach, something has to give. In this case, it's Apple not raising the price even though their prices are rising -- this says it's not looking quite as good for Apple as they had planned. Eventually the inertia that continues to carry Apple forward is going to run out; they realize this.
