“Apple Inc. is offering its newest iPhones through China’s smaller wireless carriers and has yet to announce a deal with China Mobile Ltd., which has a customer base more than twice the size of the U.S. population,” Bloomberg News reports. “The 5S and 5C models are being released for the networks of China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. and China Telecom Corp. starting this month.”
“The agreements will make Apple’s new smartphones available to about 37 percent of China’s 1.2 billion wireless subscribers as it competes with domestic rivals including Lenovo Group Ltd., ZTE Corp. and Xiaomi Corp,” Bloomberg News reports. “The 5C will start at 4,488 yuan ($733) and compete with handsets sold for as little as $100 that helped erode Apple’s market share to 5 percent in the second quarter from about 9 percent a year earlier. ‘It’s not cheap enough,’ Tucker Grinnan, a Hong Kong-based analyst with HSBC Holdings Plc., said of the iPhone 5C in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. ‘We are disappointed with the price point. It is a high-end phone in China.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple isn’t that kind of company, dummy. They don’t do “cheap.” The type of customers that are acquired by “cheap” aren’t worth the effort. Newsflash: Cheapskates don’t buy apps, music, movies, books, etc. Generally, they steal them instead. They also skimp on data (hence the far greater share of online devices for iOS than android), so they’re less desirable for the carriers, either. Other handset makers, who have nothing else to offer, can have that type of customers and the razor-thin margins such endeavors engender.
Bloomberg News reports, “The iPhone 5C will be priced between 4,488 yuan and 5,288 yuan, Apple said on its website. Grinnan said he had anticipated the new devices would cost between 2,500 yuan and 3,000 yuan. ‘The iPhone will still be a premium product in China,’ Anand Ramachandran, a Hong Kong-based analyst with Barclays Plc., wrote in a report yesterday.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, because Apple makes only premium products and because Apple is an aspirational brand, for the love of Jobs. Anyone expecting a “cheap” iPhone simply does not understand how Apple Inc. works or why it is phenomenally successful.
Bloomberg News reports, “Cupertino, California-based Apple is close to securing a deal with China Mobile and is preparing to ship iPhones to the carrier, a person with knowledge of the matter said last week.”
Full article here.
