PLDT-Smart FVP and Consumer Marketing Head Andrew Santos says that consumer loyalty remains Apple’s strongest sustainable competitive advantage in the consumer tech market, attributing the iPhone XS and XS Max’s success in the postpaid segment of the country to the brand’s consumer base’s purchasing power.
Apple is the most valuable global brand of 2017, according to Forbes, weighing in at $170 billion. This represents over 20 percent of the overall market value of the company.
“iPhone users are very loyal, so there’s that particular segment that won’t let go of their Apple products. I believe that’s what fuels the increase of the demands we’re getting,” said Santos at the highly anticipated launch of the US multinational technology company’s newest smartphone, the iPhone XS and XS Max, at the PLDT-Smart Store in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig.
Continuing, Santos added, “The initial demand for XS and XS Max’s postpaid plans is very new, but it’s very strong. The growth is well-built as compared to last year’s [iPhone X launch].”
The high-end phones are an addition to Apple’s lineup of premium devices, alongside more incremental updates to the iOS 12 hardware. Currently, the XS flagship range is the company’s wager in the battle of smartphone supremacy over competitors.
“Smart makes it a lot easier for Filipinos to get hold of the latest iPhones and optimize the phones’ breakthrough features powered by Smart LTE,” said Oscar Reyes, the telecom giant’s head of Consumer Business Market Development.
For the iPhone XS and XS Max, Apple has brought in, respectively, a more vivid Super Retina Display in a 5.8-inch 19.5:9 aspect ratio, True Tone OLED, 2436 x 1125 pixels (458 ppi), and 82.9-percent screen-to-body ratio; and a 6.5-inch 19.5:9 aspect ratio, True Tone OLED, 2688 x 1242 pixels (458 ppi), and 84.4-percent screen-to-body ratio models.
The bigger screen real estate minus the bezels and the Home button, a staple since the original iPhone in 2007, offers enhanced brightness and true blacks while showing 60-percent greater dynamic range in HDR photos. The two devices have the same pixel density (the higher the pixel density, the higher the sharpness of images), support for Dolby Vision and HDR10 and 3D Touch.
However, the XS Max offers a more immersive experience as compared to its virtually identical little brother courtesy of the built-in 3 million-pixel resolution for videos, movies and games.
Both iPhones are equipped with the Apple 64-bit A12 Bionic chip 7 nm processor with 6.9 billion transistors. This means a 4-core GPU, 6-core CPU, and 8-core design of Apple’s next-generation Neural Engine. It performs 5 trillion operations per second versus the 600 billion operations per second of the A11 Bionic chip, which powered the original iPhone X.
With 4GB RAM, the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max come in 64GB, 256GB and 512GB storage.
Both handsets carry over the stereo speaker configuration seen on past iPhone models, with the ear speaker and down-firing loudspeaker acting as discrete units when holding the phone in a landscape orientation. Apple, however, claims its has enhanced the stereo separation of the dual speakers for both the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.
Nonetheless, these features are merely exciting add-ons for consumers using the “trademark” iPhone cameras to capture their day-to-day lives.
The Apple iPhone XS and XS Max sports a dual rear camera setup of 12MP wide and 12MP telephoto shooters paired with the improved quad flash, with 1.4µm pixel size up from 1.22µm on the iPhone X. This means better shooting in low-light conditions. Apple also lets the user adjust the aperture size to change the depth effect of the photo through the after-shot Bokeh-adjustment feature.
More exciting is the addition of what Apple calls the “Smart HDR,” which combines multiple photos taken at different exposures, bringing together their best elements into a single shot. The “zero shutter lag” combined with the A12 Bionic chip bring more highlight and shadow detail for photos.
For the front camera, there is still the 7MP lens just like with the iPhone X, but it is now optimized with Smart HDR technology.
Smart is offering the new iPhones under the GigaX plans, which gives postpaid users 10GB more data for streaming videos on YouTube, iflix, Fox+ and iWant TV. “We made the plans that we have right now very affordable for our loyal subscribers considering these are premium phones,” said Santos.
Santos added that Smart Communications considers the patronage of both Apple and their own loyal subscribers as a “big moment that needs to be celebrated.”
At the event, the wireless communications provider gave 512GB iPhone XS Max to 15 Smart users that have preordered 64GB and 256GB models. Eighty-five other Smart costumers would also get their surprise phone upgrade. The celebration was hosted by Smart-PLDT endorser Kris Aquino.