“Apple is predicted to drop the price of an existing iPhone to $200 unsubsidized in 2013, accelerating share gains for its smartphone platform in emerging markets,” Neil Hughes reports for AppleInsider.
“Analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray expects Apple will likely reduce the price of an existing iPhone to about $200 by September of next year, down considerably from the $375 unsubsidized price at which the company currently sells the 8-gigabyte iPhone 3GS,” Hughes reports. “Such a move would be ‘important’ for the company, he said, as Apple’s smartphone market share is currently weakest in emerging markets where the company competes with less expensive Android-based handsets.”
Hughes reports, “Aided by the launch of a cheaper contract-free handset, Munster sees Apple’s global smartphone share growing from about 20 percent in calendar year 2012 to 32 percent in 2015.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
It will be curtains for the telcos at that point.
Just because an Analyst dreams something, does not make it so.
Not happening.
Yeah, and this analyst is Eddie, I mean, Gene Munster, to boot. Make no mistake, Apple will respond to market pricing pressures, as necessary, to maintain iPhone momentum. And a lower cost, pre-paid version makes a lot of sense. But you have to take Gene with a shaker of salt.
Apple is earning enough , eating 75% of the market profit .
In the emerging markets, anyone who buys a cheap smartphone, is not actually using data. They just cannot afford it. The so-called smartphone they bought is nothing more than a feature phone. It s dumbed out phone and only shyster WS would label them as smartphones.
BS. You have no idea what you are talking about. Most people that buy smartphones in emerging markets use it with data. Mostly prepaid packages like a certain amount of hours. And it comes cheap. For instance 7 bucks for 70 hours of 3g data in thailand. Just because you americans pay insane amounts of money for data doesn’t make it true in the rest of the world.
Indeed, Thailand is fairly developed, compared to some other countries where the case is still the same. People by $150 Androids and put them on limited data plans, where they get plenty of data throughput for rather little money.
Unlike America, which is a vast land with a fairly sparse population density, carriers in the developing world work with much smaller total area that needs coverage, making investment in towers not nearly as challenging as in America (and getting much faster return on that investment). That’s why plans in most of the world are much cheaper than in America, and why most of the world can easily affort smartphone data plans. And that is precisely why Android is following in Nokia’s footsteps (selling ultra-cheap, crappy phones to developing world at razor-thin margins). No wonder they claim largest market share…
“That’s why plans in most of the world are much cheaper than in America”
Not entirely true.
Mobile operators in the rest of the world actually have to compete. Unlike the oligopoly in the US.
And they dont nearly make as much in profits compared to the obscene amounts takes in by US operators.
“takes in” = “raked in”
Just $200. The bloodbath continues, Apple reigns victorious.
I would guess also that the much lower labor costs in developing countries help keep costs down.
@jmmx: Yep. Keeps costs down for US companies. Call-centres, manufacturing…
In these other countries, coverage will generally only be great in cities, where it’s inexpensive to have a tower service a lot of people.
In the US, people demand coverage everywhere, so when they take road trips, their data doesn’t cut out… so high population areas subsidize low population areas…. averaging out the costs but costing more on average.