“A low-cost iPhone is awaiting approval at Apple, and could be launched in 2013, according to new reports,” Ashleigh Allsopp reports for Macworld UK.
“Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said in a research note on Monday that the cheaper iPhone could be offered at a $200 to $250 price point unsubsidised,” Allsopp reports, “which could translate to around £200 here in the UK.”
Allsopp reports, “Misek says that the low-cost iPhone is just waiting to be given the green light by Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What do you think, is it time for Apple to move downmarket?
It’s not downmarket, it’s just a redesigned iPhone 4 – with the lightning connector.
Will do for the iPhone what the iPod nano did for the iPod. Cement it into the culture.
Gateway into the Apple ecosystem.
No brainer.
Of course.
If ‘thermonuclear war’ equates that everyone loses but it was done anyway, does it apply that Apple might release a low-cost iPhone to submarine Shamesung and others?
Admittedly, maybe everyone loses, but Apple loses
less than anyone else in the battle? And iPhone-copiers lose the most? Apple can afford the tactic. Can the copiers?
No. Once that begins, they cease to be the Apple that everyone craves. An Apple cheap-phone will by definition be the same as everyone else’s cheap-phone, now that all of the products are converging on Apple’s vision (the original iPhone). The only thing that Joe Public knows about Apple is its panache – they aren’t making first-purchase choices on the basis of iOS or Apple’s ecosystem. Take away the wow-you-got-an-iPhone factor, and Apple is done.
This is the killer device for T-Mobile to stop subsidies and offer pipes-only service. Once it becomes available, other carriers will have to revamp their service plans to accommodate non-contract phones at a price that doesn’t implicitly have a built in subsidy cost. Then people will stop the current iPhone rollover scheme with ATT and Verizon, get a phone they like and drive it until the wheels fall off. Apple controls the mobile phone industry by offering the device no one dares not to have. Game over.
“Once that begins, they cease to be the Apple that everyone craves.”
Indeed. There are a couple of marketing truisms that apply:
– Do NOT try to be all things to all people
– If you think your target market is everybody, you’re doomed.