Apple's goals are rarely market/business-related at all. The goal is the product.
They may make all iPhones cheaper, and they may make a cheaper lower-end phone, but to make a "cheap iPhone" to sell alongside the current iPhone is not very Apple-like at all.
It would just be a slightly slower, crappier iPhone for less money.
Does that really sound like Apple?
Thats the way the iMac line works. I dont see what is un-Apple about it. There are lower end models in their computer line up, and higher specced models.
Sure, you don't want to dilute your brand, but if you have sufficiently saturated a market tier you have to move to grow the brand. Even as more people move to smartphones their is even more need to respond to these dumbphone to smartphone switchers.
Growing the iPhone into a new model is expected. We can see this with the iPod and Mac. I think we can assume Apple's helped their AppleTV brand, revenue, and profit with the $99 version so sometimes it can be good for business.
They are already going for this with the $49 iPhone 3GS on AT&T which is why I think this will be basically be an iPhone 4 from a component standpoint. Can you see how the iPhone 3GS would likely be about $350 out of contract right now? I can.
I suspect a 4GS first and a the addition of a higher priced more powerful 5 some months thereafter.
A cheap "mid-range" iPhone would dilute the product image, causing Apple to eventually appear no different than Dell or Acer in the eyes of the consumer.
Apple doesn't need market saturation to empower the brand name recognition that drives revenue for those companies. I sincerely hope Apple can find a different method to address the pre-paid market, assuming they even feel the need to enter that market.
You do know you can buy an iPod for under $50 bucks, right?
Few are willing to accept it, but Apple is a mass market player. They don't just want to make Porsches and sell like Porsches. They want to make Porsche quality cars, but sell them like Fords.
So your job is to watch Apple and you come up with this? He obviously doesn't understand Apple. They'll never go for subpar.
Subpar, maybe not but they will cut costs with economies of scale just as much as the next guy. Perfect case in point is the advertising server grade HDs in Time Capsule or the idea of using a Mac Mini for an enterprise class mission.
I suspect a 4GS first and a the addition of a higher priced more powerful 5 some months thereafter.
I'll explain why "4GS" is a name that will never be used.
G has come to be known as being short for 'generation'. Normally in computing, it's generation of device (fifth-gen iPod, third-gen iPod nano, etc.), but for the iPhone, Apple decided to designate it as generation of cellular telephony.
Because of this, we had the iPhone 3G as a second-gen product. 3G denoted 3G speed. The iPhone 3GS was a processor (and 3G speed) boost, as well as being a third-gen product.
The iPhone 4 was a processor speed boost as well. However, it doesn't have LTE. That's why it wasn't the iPhone 4G. Apple had to change naming conventions, because 3GSS sounds idiotic. Therefore, the 4 denoted product generation.
Which is why the next iPhone will be called the iPhone 5. Because IT, TOO, will not have LTE or any other 4G cellular technology.
Predicting what Apple will do based on market analysis is like forecasting the weather based on whether it rained last week.
Using quantitative methods you can do a lot of accurate modeling.Of course it also helps to know the industry and the players. You can't depend on models alone.
Thats the way the iMac line works. I dont see what is un-Apple about it. There are lower end models in their computer line up, and higher specced models.
You might think this too fine a distinction, but I would argue instead that the iMac line is the opposite of that.
They make the base iMac, then they make a couple of models (the higher priced ones), with "extras" like more memory or a bigger screen. This rumour is the equivalent of Apple making a "budget" iMac with a low quality screen or using netbook hard drives in it or some such, just to make it four hundred bucks cheaper than the original and then selling both at the same time.
Why not instead release an iPod touch with 3G connectivity, allow it to purchase contract-free month-to-month data plans like the iPad, and launch an iCloud-driven VOIP service?
I would LOVE to have an iPhone that only made calls and synced contacts and nothing else... for less than half the weight, size and price. I don't need to carry around a computer in my pocket 24/7.
Now that is an iphone mini rumor I could buy. Same interface but it just does the phone functions (voice and text) with the calendar, contacts, notepad, camera and that's it. No wifi, perhaps only like 1-2GB of storage for a few photos etc. Price it at $200 full retail unlocked GSM. No need for a data plan cause there's no data of any kind. Carriers could give it away for free like other dumb phones or folks could go no contract monthly or prepaid.
It would be great for you or I etc with our ipads and laptops who need to make calls or those older folks that want the iphone because they think it is easier than a regular phone. Or the parents that want to give their ten year olds phones when they bike to the park etc but they don't want them being able to get on Facebook and what not and the kids are whining about 'Joey has an iphone why can't I have one'. Perhaps there could even be new parental controls that let the parents restrict use of the camera and even perhaps making and taking calls and texts to only the folks the parents have put in the address book before it was locked down.
The beauty of it is that they won't have to worry about it diluting their share because they have the two fully featured iphone models that everyone typically wants. This will be the tool they will use to say that they listened to the public, many of whom have asked for a voice only iphone etc and here it is.
I had to get rid of my iPhone to go prepaid. I would love to have it back, but I'll never go contract again. I would buy the iPhone in an instant if I could use it on prepaid. I wonder how many people out there are in a similar situation.
I suspect a 4GS first and a the addition of a higher priced more powerful 5 some months thereafter.
1) We are getting to a point where differentiating the product line might be their best option. When you factor in LTE chip size and power efficiency with a larger display I can see how that might be on the table.
2) We can't rule out this $350 phone will be exclusively for China Mobile with their GSM/TD-SCDMA network. China is Apple's fastest growing market so it only makes sense to put additional focus there.
HEY. IDIOTS. (Sorry, talking to the analysts now). You want Apple to release a "mid-range" phone? Hound the carriers to make data plans OPTIONAL.
Never happen. What could happen is more reasonable plans. And if someone had the balls to launch a law suit, a splitting of the device from the service plans so we can stop paying 'device costs' when we bring a phone in or have finished our contracts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by makingdots
Just smack a 3G + GSM sim card on an iPod Touch.. Done!
That will worth around $400 I guess. :
Won't happen. That GSM etc comes with licensing costs. That's what raises the price of the iphone so high. And if they were going to smack 3g into the ipod touch it would be by getting rid of it. After all, that's what the iphone is, a touch with a phone antenna.
I here ya, I currently have prepaid phone cost me 19.95 and I buy about $300 of prpeaid per year, so it saves me $2000 per year in fees.
I don't make many calls and I stop it recieving calls by google voice number so I can control when it receives calls and don't gve away the number much.
I'd love to be able to get an iphone prepaid, that way I could use it on my wif-fi to make long international call using skype and at wi-fi hots spots to use google maps, question is how does the prepaid contrat work with a data plan?
Alex
Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeo
I would LOVE to have an iPhone that only made calls and synced contacts and nothing else... for less than half the weight, size and price. I don't need to carry around a computer in my pocket 24/7. I'm a freelancer but I spent 95% of my time at my iMac working. I don't need web and email and angry birds for the one hour that I might be away from my desk. And if I DO need web and email (for a meeting let's say)... I'll take along my iPad or MacBook Air. For now, I'm suffering with my crappy RAZR. Can't bring myself to get an iPhone. Too heavy. Too much. Don't need it. Hopefully this mid-range rumor is not just a cheaper iPhone 4 but a whole new form factor.
Why do they keep lumping in pre-paid with new hardware? The pre-paid portion is up to the carriers, not hardware makers. Any phone can have pre-paid capabilities through a simple software update.
I still don't entirely understand why this is such a scam. Without the 2 year contract I take to get a subsidy, the carrier plans remain the same price. I will strongly agree that those plans are ridiculously inflated, but they aren't any better from carrier to carrier, so how am I being scammed?
Basically the bundling of phone subsidies with the actual voice and data tariffs, the carriers (with the phone manufacturers supporting them) inhibit competition. Imagine the oil companies would start selling cars (and subsidise 50+% of their price) in exchange for a multi-year contract (and 'SIM'-lock) limiting users to their petrol stations. There would be much less price competition at the pumps but also for new cars. Essentially, the car manufacturers would see the oil companies as their customers and trying to please them.
It's a scam because it leaves the customer with little to no choice (whether she or he wants a subsidy or not) and herds customers into upgrading hardware every two years. I mean, if car manufacturers could find a way to get customers get a new car every two years, that would be heaven for the manufacturers. It is highly nontransparent pricing, see how difficult it is for people here to believe the amount of the subsidy as reported. And if highly nontransparent pricing leads to profit margins of 70% it can be described as taking customers for a ride.
If you want the lack of pricing differences between the carriers is evidence for their collusion. And if two (or more) parties collude to charge you more, that could be called a scam.
Why not instead release an iPod touch with 3G connectivity, allow it to purchase contract-free month-to-month data plans like the iPad, and launch an iCloud-driven VOIP service?
I fail to see what the difference between an iPod touch with 3G and an unlocked iPhone is. Unless you mean an unlocked iPhone with the slightly cheaper body and display of the current iPod touch.
I mean, if car manufacturers could find a way to get customers get a new car every two years, that would be heaven for the manufacturers.
If the manufacturers would actually build vehicles that were different from those sold twenty years ago, people might actually update more often. Instead of worthless features, how about an internal combustion engine that is more than 30% efficient? How about a gigantic push into making battery tech smaller, lighter, and with greater storage? If the car manufacturers would do with their electric motor batteries what Apple did with laptop batteries, we'd have plug-in all-electric cars that could go 600 miles on a charge, get 80% charged in two hours, and even have batteries be light enough for a guy to lift and swap out himself if one went dead away from a plug.
I drive a seventeen year old van that I can still get 25 MPG out of. There's no reason for me to buy a newer vehicle because 1) the darn thing still runs perfectly because I take care of it and 2) even if I did buy a newer vehicle, none of them would give me 25 MPG because no one cares about building fuel efficient vehicles, apparently.
Why do they keep lumping in pre-paid with new hardware? The pre-paid portion is up to the carriers, not hardware makers. Any phone can have pre-paid capabilities through a simple software update.
I think it has to be agreed by carriers and manufacturers. In any case prepaid has to mean cheaper, too.
Comments
My feelings exactly.
Apple's goals are rarely market/business-related at all. The goal is the product.
They may make all iPhones cheaper, and they may make a cheaper lower-end phone, but to make a "cheap iPhone" to sell alongside the current iPhone is not very Apple-like at all.
It would just be a slightly slower, crappier iPhone for less money.
Does that really sound like Apple?
Thats the way the iMac line works. I dont see what is un-Apple about it. There are lower end models in their computer line up, and higher specced models.
Predicting what Apple will do based on market analysis is like forecasting the weather based on whether it rained last week.
Actually - that works pretty darn well in western Oregon - especially in the winter.
Sure, you don't want to dilute your brand, but if you have sufficiently saturated a market tier you have to move to grow the brand. Even as more people move to smartphones their is even more need to respond to these dumbphone to smartphone switchers.
Growing the iPhone into a new model is expected. We can see this with the iPod and Mac. I think we can assume Apple's helped their AppleTV brand, revenue, and profit with the $99 version so sometimes it can be good for business.
They are already going for this with the $49 iPhone 3GS on AT&T which is why I think this will be basically be an iPhone 4 from a component standpoint. Can you see how the iPhone 3GS would likely be about $350 out of contract right now? I can.
I suspect a 4GS first and a the addition of a higher priced more powerful 5 some months thereafter.
A cheap "mid-range" iPhone would dilute the product image, causing Apple to eventually appear no different than Dell or Acer in the eyes of the consumer.
Apple doesn't need market saturation to empower the brand name recognition that drives revenue for those companies. I sincerely hope Apple can find a different method to address the pre-paid market, assuming they even feel the need to enter that market.
You do know you can buy an iPod for under $50 bucks, right?
Few are willing to accept it, but Apple is a mass market player. They don't just want to make Porsches and sell like Porsches. They want to make Porsche quality cars, but sell them like Fords.
So your job is to watch Apple and you come up with this? He obviously doesn't understand Apple. They'll never go for subpar.
Subpar, maybe not but they will cut costs with economies of scale just as much as the next guy. Perfect case in point is the advertising server grade HDs in Time Capsule or the idea of using a Mac Mini for an enterprise class mission.
I suspect a 4GS first and a the addition of a higher priced more powerful 5 some months thereafter.
I'll explain why "4GS" is a name that will never be used.
G has come to be known as being short for 'generation'. Normally in computing, it's generation of device (fifth-gen iPod, third-gen iPod nano, etc.), but for the iPhone, Apple decided to designate it as generation of cellular telephony.
Because of this, we had the iPhone 3G as a second-gen product. 3G denoted 3G speed. The iPhone 3GS was a processor (and 3G speed) boost, as well as being a third-gen product.
The iPhone 4 was a processor speed boost as well. However, it doesn't have LTE. That's why it wasn't the iPhone 4G. Apple had to change naming conventions, because 3GSS sounds idiotic. Therefore, the 4 denoted product generation.
Which is why the next iPhone will be called the iPhone 5. Because IT, TOO, will not have LTE or any other 4G cellular technology.
Predicting what Apple will do based on market analysis is like forecasting the weather based on whether it rained last week.
Using quantitative methods you can do a lot of accurate modeling.Of course it also helps to know the industry and the players. You can't depend on models alone.
Thats the way the iMac line works. I dont see what is un-Apple about it. There are lower end models in their computer line up, and higher specced models.
You might think this too fine a distinction, but I would argue instead that the iMac line is the opposite of that.
They make the base iMac, then they make a couple of models (the higher priced ones), with "extras" like more memory or a bigger screen. This rumour is the equivalent of Apple making a "budget" iMac with a low quality screen or using netbook hard drives in it or some such, just to make it four hundred bucks cheaper than the original and then selling both at the same time.
I would LOVE to have an iPhone that only made calls and synced contacts and nothing else... for less than half the weight, size and price. I don't need to carry around a computer in my pocket 24/7.
Now that is an iphone mini rumor I could buy. Same interface but it just does the phone functions (voice and text) with the calendar, contacts, notepad, camera and that's it. No wifi, perhaps only like 1-2GB of storage for a few photos etc. Price it at $200 full retail unlocked GSM. No need for a data plan cause there's no data of any kind. Carriers could give it away for free like other dumb phones or folks could go no contract monthly or prepaid.
It would be great for you or I etc with our ipads and laptops who need to make calls or those older folks that want the iphone because they think it is easier than a regular phone. Or the parents that want to give their ten year olds phones when they bike to the park etc but they don't want them being able to get on Facebook and what not and the kids are whining about 'Joey has an iphone why can't I have one'. Perhaps there could even be new parental controls that let the parents restrict use of the camera and even perhaps making and taking calls and texts to only the folks the parents have put in the address book before it was locked down.
The beauty of it is that they won't have to worry about it diluting their share because they have the two fully featured iphone models that everyone typically wants. This will be the tool they will use to say that they listened to the public, many of whom have asked for a voice only iphone etc and here it is.
I suspect a 4GS first and a the addition of a higher priced more powerful 5 some months thereafter.
1) We are getting to a point where differentiating the product line might be their best option. When you factor in LTE chip size and power efficiency with a larger display I can see how that might be on the table.
2) We can't rule out this $350 phone will be exclusively for China Mobile with their GSM/TD-SCDMA network. China is Apple's fastest growing market so it only makes sense to put additional focus there.
HEY. IDIOTS. (Sorry, talking to the analysts now). You want Apple to release a "mid-range" phone? Hound the carriers to make data plans OPTIONAL.
Never happen. What could happen is more reasonable plans. And if someone had the balls to launch a law suit, a splitting of the device from the service plans so we can stop paying 'device costs' when we bring a phone in or have finished our contracts.
Just smack a 3G + GSM sim card on an iPod Touch.. Done!
That will worth around $400 I guess. :
Won't happen. That GSM etc comes with licensing costs. That's what raises the price of the iphone so high. And if they were going to smack 3g into the ipod touch it would be by getting rid of it. After all, that's what the iphone is, a touch with a phone antenna.
I don't make many calls and I stop it recieving calls by google voice number so I can control when it receives calls and don't gve away the number much.
I'd love to be able to get an iphone prepaid, that way I could use it on my wif-fi to make long international call using skype and at wi-fi hots spots to use google maps, question is how does the prepaid contrat work with a data plan?
Alex
I would LOVE to have an iPhone that only made calls and synced contacts and nothing else... for less than half the weight, size and price. I don't need to carry around a computer in my pocket 24/7. I'm a freelancer but I spent 95% of my time at my iMac working. I don't need web and email and angry birds for the one hour that I might be away from my desk. And if I DO need web and email (for a meeting let's say)... I'll take along my iPad or MacBook Air. For now, I'm suffering with my crappy RAZR. Can't bring myself to get an iPhone. Too heavy. Too much. Don't need it. Hopefully this mid-range rumor is not just a cheaper iPhone 4 but a whole new form factor.
I still don't entirely understand why this is such a scam. Without the 2 year contract I take to get a subsidy, the carrier plans remain the same price. I will strongly agree that those plans are ridiculously inflated, but they aren't any better from carrier to carrier, so how am I being scammed?
Basically the bundling of phone subsidies with the actual voice and data tariffs, the carriers (with the phone manufacturers supporting them) inhibit competition. Imagine the oil companies would start selling cars (and subsidise 50+% of their price) in exchange for a multi-year contract (and 'SIM'-lock) limiting users to their petrol stations. There would be much less price competition at the pumps but also for new cars. Essentially, the car manufacturers would see the oil companies as their customers and trying to please them.
It's a scam because it leaves the customer with little to no choice (whether she or he wants a subsidy or not) and herds customers into upgrading hardware every two years. I mean, if car manufacturers could find a way to get customers get a new car every two years, that would be heaven for the manufacturers. It is highly nontransparent pricing, see how difficult it is for people here to believe the amount of the subsidy as reported. And if highly nontransparent pricing leads to profit margins of 70% it can be described as taking customers for a ride.
If you want the lack of pricing differences between the carriers is evidence for their collusion. And if two (or more) parties collude to charge you more, that could be called a scam.
Why not instead release an iPod touch with 3G connectivity, allow it to purchase contract-free month-to-month data plans like the iPad, and launch an iCloud-driven VOIP service?
I fail to see what the difference between an iPod touch with 3G and an unlocked iPhone is. Unless you mean an unlocked iPhone with the slightly cheaper body and display of the current iPod touch.
I mean, if car manufacturers could find a way to get customers get a new car every two years, that would be heaven for the manufacturers.
If the manufacturers would actually build vehicles that were different from those sold twenty years ago, people might actually update more often. Instead of worthless features, how about an internal combustion engine that is more than 30% efficient? How about a gigantic push into making battery tech smaller, lighter, and with greater storage? If the car manufacturers would do with their electric motor batteries what Apple did with laptop batteries, we'd have plug-in all-electric cars that could go 600 miles on a charge, get 80% charged in two hours, and even have batteries be light enough for a guy to lift and swap out himself if one went dead away from a plug.
I drive a seventeen year old van that I can still get 25 MPG out of. There's no reason for me to buy a newer vehicle because 1) the darn thing still runs perfectly because I take care of it and 2) even if I did buy a newer vehicle, none of them would give me 25 MPG because no one cares about building fuel efficient vehicles, apparently.
Why do they keep lumping in pre-paid with new hardware? The pre-paid portion is up to the carriers, not hardware makers. Any phone can have pre-paid capabilities through a simple software update.
I think it has to be agreed by carriers and manufacturers. In any case prepaid has to mean cheaper, too.
I am really talking about the difference in price between an iPod touch and an iPhone.
Which features get scrapped? none. iOS 5 runs on the 3GS.
Photo editing, tabs in Safari are a couple of IOS 5 features not functional on my 3GS