“What if Apple’s long-rumored low-end iPhone isn’t targeted at the smartphone market’s lower reaches? What if it’s targeted at the middle?” John Paczkowski asks for AllThingsD. “What if it isn’t low-end at all, but simply mainstream? Not a $150 phone or even a $200 one, but a $350 one? A ‘mid-end’ iPhone?”
“That’s the theory put forth by Gokul Hariharan and Mark Moskowitz over at J.P. Morgan, and it’s a pretty compelling one, with strong historical precedents [iPad mini, iPod nano],” Paczkowski reports. “In each case, Apple sacrificed a portion of its typically high margins to field a high-end product with enough mainstream aspirational appeal to expand its market share.”
Read more in the 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:
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