“Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty has some good news for Apple and bad news for everybody else trying to sell smartphones in China,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“According to Huberty: The new iPhone 5C could boost Apple’s market share in China by 13.3 points (and reduce Samsung’s by 6.7 points),” P.E.D. reports. “A carrier deal with China Mobile could raise Apple’s share by another 6 points (and lower Samsung’s by 4.6 points).
P.E.D. reports, “If both things happen, Apple could find itself, once again, the No. 1 vendor the world’s largest smartphone phone market.”
Read more in the full article here.
Why buy cheap copy if you can buy original.
Wall Street believes in just the opposite. Why buy a high-priced original if a cheap copy is just as good or better? Both Wall Street and the entire smartphone industry believe that cheaper devices are ALWAYS just as good. They think that consumers don’t know any better. It’s hard to say since it’s such a widely held opinion. However, since iPhones hold their value far better than Android smartphones I believe there are many, many consumers who do value quality over cost.
It just hit me! The “C” in the new iPhone 5C doesn’t stand for Color or Cheap…it stands for China!!
The C stands for Kraken .. as in release it !!!
Yeah, this is the most logical conclusion. I mentioned this in another article yesterday…
“iPhone 5C to address the (C)hinese market, afterwards an announcement that they have struck a deal with China Mobile.
iPhone 5S announced. iPhone 5, and 4S still available elsewhere on contract for $200, $100, $0, respectively.
iPhone 4, now off contract for around $279. (This phone is still supported by iOS 7, why take it off the market?)”
Probably building numourous phones that look and do relatively the same thing isn’t a particularly efficient way to do business or indeed build phones cost efficiently not to mention totally confuse the buyer.
Nokia ran into that problem a couple of years ago. Too many models and consumers gave up trying to decide. That is a fact. The tech-heads keep claiming that the more models there are, the better. Most consumers don’t feel that way. For non-tech consumers, unless someone tells them exactly what to buy, they’ll definitely be confused. New smartphone users wouldn’t even know what features to look for in a smartphone. The carrier and store salespeople usually have to tell consumers what Android smartphones they should buy which puts Apple clearly at a disadvantage outside of Apple retail stores when it comes to sales.
Nokia is successful with a cheap version.
Like 8210 & 3210 combo.
Like 8310 & 3310 combo.
How would that confuse the customer? Older phones are cheaper… basic logic. I can see coming out with five brand new models being a little confusing, which is why Apple hasn’t gone down that road – they release one model a year.
The iPhone 5C could be China Mobile only… Apple has potentially 100 million users if they catch just 15% of China Mobile’s subscribers. That’s a significant number of phones.
I don’t think the 5C is ONLY for China, but I do think Apple will have a China Mobile version, with radios needed for that company. As much as they’d like not to, even Apple will have to cater to the world’s largest mobile subscriber base with a special model.
Now what was all the crap about Tim Cook not knowing what he’s doing….????
Sure, we all want to stick to Samsung but Apple doesn’t need to compete at the bottom feeder end. It would be like Porsche looking to compete with Kia. Apple has never been about market share and it should never be or try to play by Wall Street rules.
Wall Street is insistent when it comes to market share, no matter how a company has to arrive at it. I honestly fail to see how an intelligent person can arrive at that conclusion. Major profits should easily outweigh major market share.
Financially speaking, Android OS seems to be gaining very little profit headway with such huge market share gains. Android appears to be a platform that has growth but diminishing returns. As the number of Android companies increases, it would seem the pie slices end up thinner and thinner. Android without Samsung would be dead already. I’m not very good at math but it would seem Android will run out of growth long before gaining significant profits. I guess hedge fund managers see things a lot differently.
I highly doubt that the “C” in the iPhone 5C stands for “China”.
This is Tim’s baby. Let’s call it “Cook”.
I’m thinking it’s to be followed by the iPhone 5B and then the iPhone 5A. The 5C is the average iPhone for the average person!
🙂
Playing devil’s advocate a little here.
It occurs to me that Apple may be differentiating into lower and higher-end models now because there’s not much more a cell phone can do. Think about your iPhone. With apps and add-ons, it’s pretty much a tri-corder. Or a mother box (http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Mother_Box). It can do and be millions of things. Looking ahead, how else can the hardware be improved? Better processors and cameras, sure, maybe a bigger screen and better Siri integration and other tweaks, but what else could Apple do that’s not a tweak? Third-party add-ons take care of the rest (unless Apple buys them up and adds them on to base model phones). So it may be time to stop the arms race, focussing instead on accumulating as much market share as possible.
I know. I’m no engineer or visionary, and I hope Apple has wonderful things in store that I haven’t thought of before. On the other hand, it may be that they’ve known there would be a threshold of tech advancement and have planned for it for some time.
How many people envisioned the iPhone before the iPhone?
As technology advances, I’m sure we’ll be doing lots of amazing stuff with our handheld devices that we never imagined. iBeacon may already be a game changer in the making.