“The iPhone’s market share tells the tale of the two Apples perfectly. In the U.S, Apple’s smartphone reached an all-time high of 41.8% of all smartphone users in December, according to ComScore,” Mark Rogowsky writes for Forbes. “It has been rising consistently for years for now and observers like Asymco’s Horace Dediu think it will max out at 68% here.”
“In emerging markets, however, it’s a different story,” Rogowsky writes. “With lower incomes, the expensive iPhone — which runs north of $600 without a subsidy and sometimes much higher — is simply out of reach for hundreds of millions of mobile customers. In an explicit move to address that, Apple is resuming production of the discontinued, 3-year-old iPhone 4 for India, Indonesia and Brazil only, per a report in The Economic Times.”
“The iPhone 5s stars at 56,500 rupees, about $850, in India. The cheapest model that had been in the lineup was the iPhone 4S, which goes for 26,500 rupees ($425) “under exchange,” or with a trade in of another phone, the Times reports. The iPhone 4 now clocks in at 20,000 rupees ($320) and it’s likely that trade-ins will lower that further in at least some cases,” Rogowsky writes. “The reason this is significant is that it breaks tradition for Apple. The cheapest no-contract, new iPhone in the U.S. is the iPhone 4S, which is hard to find for less than $450, although one can do better with a trade-in. It’s not a fundamental shift in strategy for Apple, but more one of tactics.”
Read more in the full article here.