Are we forgetting that companies also have their own bias to make the decisions that increase overall profits? They lost buyers (me included) by this change, but they made up the difference by selling higher margin accessories. Companies will only cater to users if it aligns with turning a bigger profit. If adding an anti-feature is better for the bottom line, then that’s how it goes. Enshittification doesn’t happen accidentally, but by pushing the boundaries of what the users tolerate.
dustyData@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
No, we aren’t forgetting. Precisely because they are a corporation driven by profits like any other, they will do what sells units. It actually goes against the argument for headphone jacks. It is an admission that the people who vocally want phones with headphone jacks don’t buy phones (even if they have headphone jacks) and are an statistically insignificant amount of people. My original point. You are vocal, but disingenuous (perhaps not on purpose).
Fairphone catered to the mass market with the Fairphone 4 (and removed the headphone jack) and broke their own sales records. Sorry, that’s just the truth. What you want is against the grain of the rest of the market. Yes, even the market who want repairable modular phones.
Because when push comes to shove, you might want the headphone jack but it doesn’t drive your purchase decision. And that’s the important part. As an example, another person on this very thread asked what phone with a headphone jack is good, someone else gave a suggestion and immediately got the reply.
Admitting that — despite being very vocal about wanting the headphone jack — that feature is actually low in their own list of decision making priorities. At the very least it is below screen quality. In marketing, people are usually very vocal about things that actually don’t influence their own purchase decisions. That’s just a fact, people are very bad at knowing what they want. That’s why you should always observe their behavior, not just ask their opinion. Because a lot of people express opinions they don’t uphold with actions.
kopasz7@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
They lose no customers by including it. They lose some by omitting it.
So it boils down to being too expensive to include? Hardly!
You evaluate prior decisions with posterior data. But you fail to take into account the counterfactuals. How do you know how much the FP4 would have sold with a jack?
Claiming that an increase in sales validates the goodness of the decision us not causal.
Is the same logic that would tell you that playing russian roulette is worthwile in case you win and get some reward. That’s backwards rationalization, fitting a narrative.
If markst research universally showed that people don’t care about a jack then why do some phones still have it? Are these manufacturers going against the grain? Surely they wouldn’t leave money on the table if it worked like that, because it does not.
The justification of “they do what sells units” is backwards. It would imply that no product would ever flop. But products regularly do. There is no telling in advance how it will perform, and saying otherwise is falling prey to the problem of induction, whether past observarions justify predictions.
The FP4 could have broke sales records for a multitude of reasons. How can you say which factor caused it when there is only one scenario that played out? We don’t have alternative universes to compare, where they released one with a jack, or another with some other altered specs.
dustyData@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’m back to statistical significant data, and why it is important to have good data scientists in the loop. The idea is precisely to ask the questions you are asking. Would have been different if…? Then try to control for other variables in order to avoid the induction error. How do you know they didn’t do this with their data?
That’s why I mention other phone models. There are Sony phones with and without jacks. There are Asus phones with and without jacks. How did they perform compared to each other? How far away is that difference from what could be expected from randomness? How does that difference compare when the other factors are compensated for? How do they compare with other phones?
I assume they did their homework, and also want to sell more earbuds. They wouldn’t push for earbuds and wireless if headphone jacks were market drivers. It would be cheaper to install a headphone jack rather than updating the BT board? Maybe, I don’t know. But if other factors have a significant impact on sales while the jack doesn’t. Then they have their decision made for them. Market research is not about being right all the time, it is not magic, it is about reducing uncertainty and risk in making decisions. Precisely because there are other phone maker with a headphone jack that do worse than the Fairphone is base enough to understand why they feel safe keeping that feature out. It doesn’t add sales and its absence doesn’t reduce it either. So they know they are free to keep going even if some vocal critics will be pissed, the actual buyers couldn’t care any less.
kopasz7@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Money is a powerful motivator to do really crappy things, and Apple has done exactly that for decades now. Others are following suit in the lucrative accessory market.
But this is the smoking gun, pointed at the consumer.
Dongles are an admission that the phones they come with don’t work in the way the company knows its consumers need them to.
Almost as insidious as how the inkjet printer manufacturers vendor lock and upcharge for ink. Profitable? Indeed. Despicable and anti-consumer? Very much so.