iPhone on the cheap? Forget it says Apple.

[perksie]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/11/apple_denies_cheap_iphone/

[Anonymous]

ooh wow, this doesn't half put me off Apple, I thought they would at least TRY to make their products a bit more affordable to normal people?! I would have thought their target audience would also be late teens/early 20's people that enjoy the use of apps - at this age, who the hell can really afford a £530 phone... seriously.

[MI5]

How do they propose to become "smartphone leaders" without the market share and without any groundbreaking tech in their phones....?

[Anonymous]

Did anybody really expect Apple with there Stalin business model to really offer anything else?

[Bambino]

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@Anonymous wrote:

ooh wow, this doesn't half put me off Apple, I thought they would at least TRY to make their products a bit more affordable to normal people?! I would have thought their target audience would also be late teens/early 20's people that enjoy the use of apps - at this age, who the hell can really afford a £530 phone... seriously.

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You may think that teens are the target, but maybe not:

http://bgr.com/2013/01/10/iphone-surface-teen-survey-287400/

[Anonymous]

All they want is money & the monopoly on the smartphone market than again, they do however have exceptional customer service

[Anonymous]

Oooh, well that's unexpected, this may be because of the fact Apple haven't dramatically changed their software (nor their hardware much) since they brought out apps in I think it was the second gen iPhone. Siri was slightly nifty but apart from that its the same old with a different look.

[perksie]

They charge about £500+ for the iPhone for which they pay their makers about £3.00 to put together with less than £200 of parts so it's not surprising they can afford to provide a good service.

How else could they have grown so quickly?

[sheepdog]

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@Anonymous wrote:

All they want is money & the monopoly on the smartphone market than again, they do however have exceptional customer service

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Doubt they want the lower end of the market that is dominated by Nokia and Android. It comes down to the "cool" factor which they'll lose overnight as everyone will want one i.e. those with less disposable income which in turn means less revenue for the real moneyspinner: itunes & the app store. 

Put another way, what is the proportion of sales of apps on android v iphone? You might find that Android users won't pay for as many apps as iphone users. 

Once they go downmarket, you'll discover that customer service will fade away and they'll need to become like the other players as they won't be able to maintain it. Apple is a premium product and its better for them to maintain that rather than grow in the lower end as it alienates the loyal userbase which has kept them going through many years. 

For a bit of retrospect, have a read of this link from a couple of years ago: http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/08/vicky-pollard-has-an-iphone-4-you-are-not-cool-any-more.html

[Anonymous]

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@perksie wrote:

They charge about £500+ for the iPhone for which they pay their makers about £3.00 to put together with less than £200 of parts so it's not surprising they can afford to provide a good service.

How else could they have grown so quickly?

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Throw in cheap labour too