“It appears that the iPhone 5C, Apple’s colorful low-end phone, is not selling well as Apple expected,” Ron Miller writes for CITEworld. “During Monday’s Apple earnings call, Tim Cook admitted that there was a shortage of iPhone 5Ss because they expected the iPhone 5C to sell better than it did. They spent the rest of the quarter trying to catch up with demand.”
“Why hasn’t the colorful lower-priced model caught on? Perhaps it’s because — as Cook suggested — people simply liked the high end finish and features of the 5S better, particularly Touch ID. Given the relatively small price gap between the two, most people seemed willing to pay the extra money to get it,” Miller writes. “The 5C might have been “unapologetically plastic,” but colorful plastic is apparently better suited for the Moto X and various Windows Phones. That’s what Palador co-founder Benjamin Robbins, whose firm helps companies define their mobile strategy, thinks. ‘Budget is not their brand. They historically have been a top tier brand. Their clientele has never responded well to cheap. Their customer loyalty is driven on the exclusivity of the brand. This is a manifestation of platform war whereby they won’t gain Android users by going cheap, they will only lessen their brand and diminish that elite status that their clients love,’ Robbins told me.”
“Apple sold 51 million iPhones in the last quarter. Android may be the leading platform in terms of market share, but Apple is still selling more smartphones and growing faster than every other smartphone vendor except Samsung (according to the latest IDC figures),” Miller writes. “If it wants to continue to do that, it looks like it needs to stay out of the shallow end, because it’s clearly not welcome there.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: One mistake: iPhone 5c is not a “low-end” phone. It is, for Apple, a mid-tier device; for everyone else, iPhone 5c is a high-end smartphone – one of the very best smartphones ever made, in fact.
As for the rest: Told ya so. Multiple times. And, in fact, told ya why a year before iPhone 5c was even unveiled.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MacRaven” for the heads up.]
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