Price-wise, I think they should be targeting the following off-contract:
8GB iPhone lite $349
16GB iPhone lite $449
16GB iPhone $549
I think at some stage, the entry iPhone and iPod Touch will be better off as a single line. This allows old phones to be handed down to kids as iPods just by taking out the sim and iPods get the option to use 3G/4G when out and about.
Why would Apple drop the newest iPhone off contract price by a $100? Pretty crazy if you ask me especially when their margins aren't as high for the top iPhone. Most people don't care about off contract, they care about seeing that special $199 price.
Seems like a dubious proposition to me, given the glowing remarks Steve Tim made yesterday on the sales of 4 and 4s. Gosh, if it's not broken, why fix it? Unless.... unless Apple has something faster, better, stronger, and even moremagical in the works!
When has apple every stated anything against the benefit of their profits? Of course they're going to be glowing about the 4 & 4s. Any company would be crazy not to, I mean look at MS w/ their RT tablets, they still "love" them. You should know by now that if a company says one thing is magical, they're only waiting till the next product a few months out to replace it.
Why is this even surprising? If they are going to replace the program of selling the the old models with a new cheap iPhone then obviously the 4, the 4s and the 5 will all be discontinued.
The only disagreement I have is why they would call the new 'pro" iPhone the 5s when "iPhone 6" sounds nicer and would be less confusing.
This is such a load of nonsnense becauase Apple would put itself in the situation of having millions of unsold iPhone5's in the pipeline and on shelves which they would not be able to sell! Again the moron that thought this one up is a total dochebag and cannot see past his 80 IQ
1) I think you are way overestimating what they would have in the pipeline at the moment the new phone came out.
2) They sure would be able to sell them. Why not?
3) someone with an 80 IQ can't even tie their shoes most of the time
I never knew iphone 5 is the old technology in the face of low cost iphone!
If, (if) the new low cost iPhone exists, then today's iPhone 5 actually *is* the "iPhone lite" (or something really similar), given that the idea is to put old internals in a cheap case and at the point the next iPhone is released, the 5 becomes old news.
This is such a load of nonsnense becauase Apple would put itself in the situation of having millions of unsold iPhone5's in the pipeline and on shelves which they would not be able to sell! Again the moron that thought this one up is a total dochebag and cannot see past his 80 IQ
LOL, they just have to drop them by $100 and the people that dont want the plastic case ones may even fight to get them. Even with no low cost iphones, it what they would have done anyway.
I never knew iphone 5 is the old technology in the face of low cost iphone!
Its old tech in a fancy case. Now it will be old tech in a regular case. Happy?
it makes more sense to sell old tech in regular shells to drive the price down a bit more. And you have the benefit of colors. I am 100% with apple on this. And ti gives them the option to tweak the internals at the same time. By just selling old phone Apple was lasy, but now they are putting some taugh into that market. Imo the results will be massive sales and better margins.
I think there mid range strategy is very clever. It the high model that worries me. Unless it has some major innovation killer thing, i dont think they will get away with pricing a 4" phone at the high end this time. The fingerprint thing needs to be for something more than just unlocking the phone and buying on itunes.
I don't think this is that far-fetched. Keeping the 5 around might lead to a confusing lineup of iPhone options. I picture Phil Schiller wanting to eliminate the 5 in order to have 2 lineups of iPhones: the "Lite", and the "Jesus Phone". It also gives them an opportunity to reset the naming of the iPhone lineup. The "Lite" will simply be called "iPhone" and the aluminum will be called the "iPhone Pro" (or "iPhone S" or whatever). Keeping the 5 around would muddle things a bit.
There is also the possibility that this isn't a Phil Schiller decision, but a Tim Cook one: the iPhone Lite lineup could have higher margins than a price-reduced 5. With an injection-molded shell, likely easy assembly, and economies of scale for the 4" LCD, SoC + other components --- not a crazy theory.
Why would Apple drop the newest iPhone off contract price by a $100? Pretty crazy if you ask me especially when their margins aren't as high for the top iPhone. Most people don't care about off contract, they care about seeing that special $199 price.
Some of the markets they've been struggling in are the ones with low entry prices and a lot of the time are prepay phones. That would be the reason to have a low entry point off-contract. Lowering the price of the top model would simply be to avoid leaving too large a gap, which would drive people to the lower models.
The only disagreement I have is why they would call the new 'pro" iPhone the 5s when "iPhone 6" sounds nicer and would be less confusing.
Wait, isn't it the 7th model? 5S makes sense being the 7th because it has no relation but the 7th being iPhone 6 is very confusing. I hope they get it right this time because consumers really cared what they called it last time.
... the Cupertino company typically keeps the last two generations of its bestselling smartphone in production in order to market them to lower-income earners and markets.
And the lower-cost iPhone could, in theory, allow Apple to stop production of old iPhones entirely. This would reduce support overhead by eliminating the need to support 2 year old hardware with the latest version of iOS. Right now, you can buy three different generations of iPhones, each with the latest iOS 6.x pre-installed. Meaning Apple needs to test each release of iOS on three different generations of iPhone. That costs money, and tends to slow down adoption of the latest hardware and software.
A lower-cost iPhone might replace previous years' high-end iPhone models. Want a cheap iPhone? Buy the latest "iPhone Lite." It won't have all the features of the high-end model, so if the rumors of a fingerprint sensing screen are true, you probably would need to buy the high-end iPhone to get that. (And it would be worth it.) This scheme would allow to reduce production from three iPhone models to just two, and they would always be producing the current model of each line. Each year the production lines would retool for the new model.
One trick to making this work would be to move last year's high-end iPhone components into this year's low-cost iPhone. So the low-cost iPhone wouldn't require as much development effort. So, this year, Apple would put the iPhone 5 components into the first low-cost iPhone. And this year's new high-end iPhone would have some new hardware features (improved camera plus fingerprint sensing touchscreen maybe.) Next year, the low-end iPhone would have some of this year's high-end iPhone components (camera) minus features that are high-end iPhone-only (fingerprint sensing touchscreen.)
So what about the "free" model? The 2-year old iPhone that's $0 with carrier subsidy? Apple might be able to sell two different "iPhone Lite" models: a 32GB model for $99, and another with 16 GB for $0. There might never even be a "last year's iPhone" of either the high-end or low-cost model.
All of which would tend to allow Apple to move iOS ahead faster, without the burden of backward compatibility and/or testing on older model iPhones. Apple could only allow each release of iOS to run on the current high-end iPhone and last year's high-end iPhone. Of course, there's the matter of reduced economy of scale because each year's iPhone development costs would be amortized over only one year's unit volume. And there would surely be some unhappy users who were accustomed to running the latest iOS on 2-generation old hardware.
Apple has all the numbers plugged into a Numbers spreadsheet somewhere in Cupertino. Just my $0.02. We'll see what happens.
This is such a load of nonsnense becauase Apple would put itself in the situation of having millions of unsold iPhone5's in the pipeline and on shelves which they would not be able to sell! Again the moron that thought this one up is a total dochebag and cannot see past his 80 IQ
Think about it: Apple only needs one premium phone which is covered by the new 5S. This phone will have a newer A-chip and fingerprint unlocking but otherwise look like the iPhone 5.
The consumer iPhone will come in gaudy colors and will be essentially an iPhone 5 in specs only.
Unsold iPhone 5 inventory can be blown out on eBay as "reconditioned" iPhones with a new waranty (What Apple is doing now with some of their recent inventory).
In this way Apple clears their inventory of all iDevices with the old connector and moves to the single screen size of the iPhone 5. Life is good, God is in his kingdom and all is right in the world.
If Apple can make this supposed iPhone Lite at a comparable cost-point to their prospective "cheap" offerings, the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, with higher profit margins, and a better consumer proposition, they'll do it.
Apart from the "plastic" back there's little to these rumours that suggests any of these things is on the cards. Is a plastic back enough? Maybe, but it's a pretty thin argument. Maybe.
Unless your'e an Arrested Development fan, "maybe" isn't an interesting story.
They could also save money on production if there was only one model instead of multiple memory sizes, or if the manufacturing itself was simpler and therefore cheaper. I agree it's kind of dubious, because to replace the current program of selling the old ones, the "iPhone lite" needs to be in the $200 range off contract and the starting price of a new iPhone is more like $700.
So if it's a "mid-range" phone, then it isn't replacing the older iPhones, and they've just confused their line up with even *more* models. If on the other hand it's a cheap iPhone to replace the older models thing, then it has to be so cheap as to make us wonder how the hell it can be that cheap.
That's why I keep hoping this is a $200 off-contract phone. If it isn't, Apple is entering into a world of complexity and confusion like never before with their product lineup. At minimum, it would give them three iPhone models this year (no change) and four each year for the years after that (or more).
Some of the markets they've been struggling in are the ones with low entry prices and a lot of the time are prepay phones. That would be the reason to have a low entry point off-contract. Lowering the price of the top model would simply be to avoid leaving too large a gap, which would drive people to the lower models.
Wait, isn't it the 7th model? 5S makes sense being the 7th because it has no relation but the 7th being iPhone 6 is very confusing. I hope they get it right this time because consumers really cared what they called it last time.
We have no idea what Apple may call their new iPhones.
I'd bet they won't call it the iPhone 7 or the iPhone 8 with Uncle Fester's crap-phone running Windows 8 and the Windows 7 Nokia phones still being unloaded by carriers. The premium iPhone needs a name that echos some cachét like a high-end auto or a Rolex watch... that's where Apple's going with forking the iPhone marketing and any new iWear devices.
Maybe they get their info from Apple blogs. I have been calling this for ages. But only because it's obvious. Why keep losing profits on margins by offering the previous high-end difficult to produce models at entry level low margins prices? It NEVER made sense.
Of course the iPhone 5 would still sell at resellers and why would they leave millions in the pipeline anyway? If they plan the change for September/October, they will assess the demand and issue the supply accordingly (they've become pretty good at this).
They don't even need to call this one the 5S. It can just be iPhone and iPhone lite. Similar to iPad and iPad mini.
Price-wise, I think they should be targeting the following off-contract:
8GB iPhone lite $349
16GB iPhone lite $449
16GB iPhone $549
I think at some stage, the entry iPhone and iPod Touch will be better off as a single line. This allows old phones to be handed down to kids as iPods just by taking out the sim and iPods get the option to use 3G/4G when out and about.
I like the idea.
I assume Apple would save a lot on production with this as well.
Only thing I hope is that the iPhone Lite is an aluminum iPod Touch phone and not a cheap plastic phone like the leaks suggest.
Why is this even surprising? If they are going to replace the program of selling the the old models with a new cheap iPhone then obviously the 4, the 4s and the 5 will all be discontinued.
The only disagreement I have is why they would call the new 'pro" iPhone the 5s when "iPhone 6" sounds nicer and would be less confusing.
Also like the idea of calling the iPhone 5S "iPhone Pro" and the cheaper phone simply "iPhone" but ONLY of the cheaper phone is NOT plastic.
All aluminum forever Apple. Don't go back to cheap white plastic.
Why keep losing profits on margins by offering the previous high-end difficult to produce models at entry level low margins prices? It NEVER made sense.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Price-wise, I think they should be targeting the following off-contract:
8GB iPhone lite $349
16GB iPhone lite $449
16GB iPhone $549
I think at some stage, the entry iPhone and iPod Touch will be better off as a single line. This allows old phones to be handed down to kids as iPods just by taking out the sim and iPods get the option to use 3G/4G when out and about.
Why would Apple drop the newest iPhone off contract price by a $100? Pretty crazy if you ask me especially when their margins aren't as high for the top iPhone. Most people don't care about off contract, they care about seeing that special $199 price.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TeaEarleGreyHot
Seems like a dubious proposition to me, given the glowing remarks Steve Tim made yesterday on the sales of 4 and 4s. Gosh, if it's not broken, why fix it? Unless.... unless Apple has something faster, better, stronger, and even more magical in the works!
When has apple every stated anything against the benefit of their profits? Of course they're going to be glowing about the 4 & 4s. Any company would be crazy not to, I mean look at MS w/ their RT tablets, they still "love" them. You should know by now that if a company says one thing is magical, they're only waiting till the next product a few months out to replace it.
Why is this even surprising? If they are going to replace the program of selling the the old models with a new cheap iPhone then obviously the 4, the 4s and the 5 will all be discontinued.
The only disagreement I have is why they would call the new 'pro" iPhone the 5s when "iPhone 6" sounds nicer and would be less confusing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul94544
This is such a load of nonsnense becauase Apple would put itself in the situation of having millions of unsold iPhone5's in the pipeline and on shelves which they would not be able to sell! Again the moron that thought this one up is a total dochebag and cannot see past his 80 IQ
1) I think you are way overestimating what they would have in the pipeline at the moment the new phone came out.
2) They sure would be able to sell them. Why not?
3) someone with an 80 IQ can't even tie their shoes most of the time
4) obviously you have a hyperbole problem
Quote:
Originally Posted by helicopterben
I never knew iphone 5 is the old technology in the face of low cost iphone!
If, (if) the new low cost iPhone exists, then today's iPhone 5 actually *is* the "iPhone lite" (or something really similar), given that the idea is to put old internals in a cheap case and at the point the next iPhone is released, the 5 becomes old news.
LOL, they just have to drop them by $100 and the people that dont want the plastic case ones may even fight to get them. Even with no low cost iphones, it what they would have done anyway.
Its old tech in a fancy case. Now it will be old tech in a regular case. Happy?
it makes more sense to sell old tech in regular shells to drive the price down a bit more. And you have the benefit of colors. I am 100% with apple on this. And ti gives them the option to tweak the internals at the same time. By just selling old phone Apple was lasy, but now they are putting some taugh into that market. Imo the results will be massive sales and better margins.
I think there mid range strategy is very clever. It the high model that worries me. Unless it has some major innovation killer thing, i dont think they will get away with pricing a 4" phone at the high end this time. The fingerprint thing needs to be for something more than just unlocking the phone and buying on itunes.
I don't think this is that far-fetched. Keeping the 5 around might lead to a confusing lineup of iPhone options. I picture Phil Schiller wanting to eliminate the 5 in order to have 2 lineups of iPhones: the "Lite", and the "Jesus Phone". It also gives them an opportunity to reset the naming of the iPhone lineup. The "Lite" will simply be called "iPhone" and the aluminum will be called the "iPhone Pro" (or "iPhone S" or whatever). Keeping the 5 around would muddle things a bit.
There is also the possibility that this isn't a Phil Schiller decision, but a Tim Cook one: the iPhone Lite lineup could have higher margins than a price-reduced 5. With an injection-molded shell, likely easy assembly, and economies of scale for the 4" LCD, SoC + other components --- not a crazy theory.
Some of the markets they've been struggling in are the ones with low entry prices and a lot of the time are prepay phones. That would be the reason to have a low entry point off-contract. Lowering the price of the top model would simply be to avoid leaving too large a gap, which would drive people to the lower models.
Wait, isn't it the 7th model? 5S makes sense being the 7th because it has no relation but the 7th being iPhone 6 is very confusing. I hope they get it right this time because consumers really cared what they called it last time.
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
... the Cupertino company typically keeps the last two generations of its bestselling smartphone in production in order to market them to lower-income earners and markets.
And the lower-cost iPhone could, in theory, allow Apple to stop production of old iPhones entirely. This would reduce support overhead by eliminating the need to support 2 year old hardware with the latest version of iOS. Right now, you can buy three different generations of iPhones, each with the latest iOS 6.x pre-installed. Meaning Apple needs to test each release of iOS on three different generations of iPhone. That costs money, and tends to slow down adoption of the latest hardware and software.
A lower-cost iPhone might replace previous years' high-end iPhone models. Want a cheap iPhone? Buy the latest "iPhone Lite." It won't have all the features of the high-end model, so if the rumors of a fingerprint sensing screen are true, you probably would need to buy the high-end iPhone to get that. (And it would be worth it.) This scheme would allow to reduce production from three iPhone models to just two, and they would always be producing the current model of each line. Each year the production lines would retool for the new model.
One trick to making this work would be to move last year's high-end iPhone components into this year's low-cost iPhone. So the low-cost iPhone wouldn't require as much development effort. So, this year, Apple would put the iPhone 5 components into the first low-cost iPhone. And this year's new high-end iPhone would have some new hardware features (improved camera plus fingerprint sensing touchscreen maybe.) Next year, the low-end iPhone would have some of this year's high-end iPhone components (camera) minus features that are high-end iPhone-only (fingerprint sensing touchscreen.)
So what about the "free" model? The 2-year old iPhone that's $0 with carrier subsidy? Apple might be able to sell two different "iPhone Lite" models: a 32GB model for $99, and another with 16 GB for $0. There might never even be a "last year's iPhone" of either the high-end or low-cost model.
All of which would tend to allow Apple to move iOS ahead faster, without the burden of backward compatibility and/or testing on older model iPhones. Apple could only allow each release of iOS to run on the current high-end iPhone and last year's high-end iPhone. Of course, there's the matter of reduced economy of scale because each year's iPhone development costs would be amortized over only one year's unit volume. And there would surely be some unhappy users who were accustomed to running the latest iOS on 2-generation old hardware.
Apple has all the numbers plugged into a Numbers spreadsheet somewhere in Cupertino. Just my $0.02. We'll see what happens.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul94544
This is such a load of nonsnense becauase Apple would put itself in the situation of having millions of unsold iPhone5's in the pipeline and on shelves which they would not be able to sell! Again the moron that thought this one up is a total dochebag and cannot see past his 80 IQ
Think about it: Apple only needs one premium phone which is covered by the new 5S. This phone will have a newer A-chip and fingerprint unlocking but otherwise look like the iPhone 5.
The consumer iPhone will come in gaudy colors and will be essentially an iPhone 5 in specs only.
Unsold iPhone 5 inventory can be blown out on eBay as "reconditioned" iPhones with a new waranty (What Apple is doing now with some of their recent inventory).
In this way Apple clears their inventory of all iDevices with the old connector and moves to the single screen size of the iPhone 5. Life is good, God is in his kingdom and all is right in the world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I hope they get it right this time because consumers really cared what they called it last time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowley
If Apple can make this supposed iPhone Lite at a comparable cost-point to their prospective "cheap" offerings, the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, with higher profit margins, and a better consumer proposition, they'll do it.
Apart from the "plastic" back there's little to these rumours that suggests any of these things is on the cards. Is a plastic back enough? Maybe, but it's a pretty thin argument. Maybe.
Unless your'e an Arrested Development fan, "maybe" isn't an interesting story.
They could also save money on production if there was only one model instead of multiple memory sizes, or if the manufacturing itself was simpler and therefore cheaper. I agree it's kind of dubious, because to replace the current program of selling the old ones, the "iPhone lite" needs to be in the $200 range off contract and the starting price of a new iPhone is more like $700.
So if it's a "mid-range" phone, then it isn't replacing the older iPhones, and they've just confused their line up with even *more* models. If on the other hand it's a cheap iPhone to replace the older models thing, then it has to be so cheap as to make us wonder how the hell it can be that cheap.
That's why I keep hoping this is a $200 off-contract phone. If it isn't, Apple is entering into a world of complexity and confusion like never before with their product lineup. At minimum, it would give them three iPhone models this year (no change) and four each year for the years after that (or more).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Some of the markets they've been struggling in are the ones with low entry prices and a lot of the time are prepay phones. That would be the reason to have a low entry point off-contract. Lowering the price of the top model would simply be to avoid leaving too large a gap, which would drive people to the lower models.
Wait, isn't it the 7th model? 5S makes sense being the 7th because it has no relation but the 7th being iPhone 6 is very confusing. I hope they get it right this time because consumers really cared what they called it last time.
We have no idea what Apple may call their new iPhones.
I'd bet they won't call it the iPhone 7 or the iPhone 8 with Uncle Fester's crap-phone running Windows 8 and the Windows 7 Nokia phones still being unloaded by carriers. The premium iPhone needs a name that echos some cachét like a high-end auto or a Rolex watch... that's where Apple's going with forking the iPhone marketing and any new iWear devices.
I like the idea.
I assume Apple would save a lot on production with this as well.
Only thing I hope is that the iPhone Lite is an aluminum iPod Touch phone and not a cheap plastic phone like the leaks suggest.
Also like the idea of calling the iPhone 5S "iPhone Pro" and the cheaper phone simply "iPhone" but ONLY of the cheaper phone is NOT plastic.
All aluminum forever Apple. Don't go back to cheap white plastic.
Because they weren't, probably.