“I hope I’m as right about this rumored ‘cheap’ iPhone as I was about Apple’s iPad mini,” Rocco Pendola writes for TheStreet. “When iPad mini was about to hit, most everybody said it was going to be ‘cheap’ and would fail. Wrong on both counts. It’s relatively expensive and, as far as we know, a major success.”
“If Apple entered the $199 space against Google and Amazon.com, it would have won. The Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire have a tough enough time competing against premium-priced Apple tablets; there would be no contest if Apple went the inexpensive route,” Pendola writes. “That might sound like an opportunity to you, but it’s not. It’s an easy short-term answer (to a question we should not be asking) that Apple avoided — thankfully — with iPad mini.”
Pendola writes, “Tim Cook breaks a long-standing Apple motto if he… capitulates to what consumers allegedly want as opposed to knowing what they want and prescribing it to them… Simply put, a cheap iPhone will ultimately get Tim Cook fired. If, however, he has small teams working on Siri, Passbook and the next beautiful piece of premium hardware, he could end up going down as the guy who took Apple to the next level.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back on January 9th: “You can bet that if Apple enters the pre-paid phone market in emerging markets, they most certainly will have margins and they will make a profit on each device sold.”
Related articles:
If John Sculley says Apple must do this then Apple probably shouldn’t – January 17, 2013
Apple’s Phil Schiller: Cheap iPhone will ‘never be the future of Apple products’ – January 10, 2013
Bloomberg: Apple developing cheaper, smaller iPhone for 2013 holiday release – January 9, 2013
WSJ: Apple prepping less-expensive iPhone – January 8, 2013
Apple to launch low-cost iPhone with 5-inch display for emerging markets in 2H13, sources say – January 8, 2013
Barclays: Cheaper iPhone for emerging markets ‘key’ for Apple – December 4, 2012