Apple's revival of iPhone 6 with 32GB storage continues with sales in Belarus

Posted:
in iPhone
The re-release of the iPhone 6 with 32 gigabytes of storage is expanding into another territory, after launches in India, China, and Taiwan in recent months, with a premium reseller offering the unusual-capacity handset to customers in Belarus beginning next week.




The version on sale by i-Store will cost 999 rubles ($520), when it goes on sale, including free delivery in Minsk, and will only be available in Space Gray. Other than the 32GB capacity storage, and the name of iPhone 6 (2017), the revived device has the same specifications as the original, and will run iOS 10 out of the box.

The price may be considered a bargain compared to the prices of other iPhones in the country. According to local blog 42.Tut, a refurbished iPhone 6 with 16GB of storage will cost 1,200 rubles ($625), and the iPhone 6s with 32GB of capacity sells for 1,629 rubles ($800).

The appearance of an updated iPhone 6 in Belarus follows similar launches in India, China, and Taiwan, where the 32GB model is offered to consumers in each market, without the option of changing the color. Just as with the sales in the earlier three countries, this specific model of iPhone 6 is only being sold through one outlet, and not through Apple's own retail channels.

It is unclear exactly why Apple is selling brand new units of the older iPhone in this way, but it is notable that the sales are carried out in what could be considered emerging markets. In these areas, consumers are more likely to buy cheaper smartphones instead of paying premium prices for a recent iPhone, so this could be a play by Apple to increase its market share by offering a lower-cost device.

Aside from these recent sales, Apple has not sold a 32GB iPhone 6, with it initially offered in 16-, 64-, and 128GB capacities. Given the extremely limited release of these devices, as well as the relatively better economies of Western markets, it is unlikely that Apple will be bringing this particular model to more developed markets anytime soon.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    wood1208wood1208 Posts: 2,905member
    When you are in Rome, sell as Romans sells. If reincarnated larger screen iPhone 6 can sell because still well suitable for the region than make money that way. Same users liking Apple products when have more money to spend and decide to upgrade than they will buy current iPhone model. Why companies, restaurants give you free samples or bite because once familiar, later you may buy their products.
    edited March 2017 racerhomie3
  • Reply 2 of 6
    shaminoshamino Posts: 527member
    This trend is interesting.  Especially that they are reviving an otherwise discontinued series (6) with a memory configuration never before shipped.

    If they were just interested in a low-cost model for these markets, it seems to me that they would be better off selling the SE (maybe a special build with 32G storage) instead of reviving the 6.  Especially when you consider that a 32G SE could be made with the same assembly lines and tools as the other SE models, while a 6 would require re-introducing the (presumably dismantled) tooling for the 6 in the factories.

    On the other hand, if these are being built in new factories (like in India), then maybe it makes more sense - they can equip the factories with the tooling for the 6 that would otherwise end up getting recycled.  Whereas they would need to produce more tools to make SE's in those new factories.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 3 of 6
    brakkenbrakken Posts: 687member
    As the Services continues to grow and sales revenue plateaus, this move makes perfect sense. This is Apple's version of 'customer friendly, good enough', and I'm sure will rake in money for Apple!
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 4 of 6
    GeorgeBMacGeorgeBMac Posts: 11,421member
    brakken said:
    As the Services continues to grow and sales revenue plateaus, this move makes perfect sense. This is Apple's version of 'customer friendly, good enough', and I'm sure will rake in money for Apple!
    It emphasizes that the major appeal of Apple products is not the gadget itself because anybody -- even Samsung -- can make a great gadget.  Rather, it is the Apple ecosystem that is its strength.  And, you get that same ecosystem as long as the OS is current.  Yes, you might be missing a few features or enhancements (like my old IPhone 5 cannot do ApplePay), but, for the most part....

    In any case, this news confirms that I made the right decision when I decided to hold onto my 128Gb IPhone 6+....
  • Reply 5 of 6
    shaminoshamino Posts: 527member
    ...  anybody -- even Samsung -- can make a great gadget.  Rather, it is the Apple ecosystem that is its strength.
    Well, anybody can make a great gadget, but the reality is that very very few actually do.  It's far easier and cheaper to make cheap knock-off copies of what is already successful.

    If you think back to the start of the handheld/mobile era, there were dumb mobile phones and PDAs.  The first really successful PDA, the Palm Pilot and successors, was very innovative.  There wasn't much of an ecosystem at first (but they did make developer tools and specs public, to quickly develop one), but one could argue that its success was due to the fact that it was a truly new device and was extremely easy to use.

    Then everybody jumped on the bandwagon.  So we had PalmOS devices from various vendors, pocket versions of Windows, a few proprietary OS's, etc.  Apple's Newton Message Pad fit in here as well, but nobody really managed to displace Palm's popularity.  Part of it was ecosystem but a lot was because most everybody else (aside from the Newton) wasn't innovative - they were either copying Palm, or they were trying to port system software from other platforms.

    The smartphone era really got started when Handspring combined a Palm PDA with a phone.  Yes, there were Blackberries before that, but they were (and continued to be) a niche product, never gaining the massive followings that others did.  Once the Palm phones shipped, then we started seeing everybody else do the same - Windows phones, Symbian phones, and a bunch with proprietary operating systems.

    Until the iPhone.  It was the innovative new player that took the market away from everybody else.  It introduced a new UI, designed around touch screens (no more stylus or keyboards) and was fully integrated with Apple's Mac/iPod infrastructure.  The interesting thing here is that the first generation iPhone was not, from a feature comparison standpoint, as good as the others - it had a slow processor, only 2G connectivity, only supported one US carrier, and could not (without hacking) run more apps than the ones that were bundled with it.  But that didn't seem to matter - everybody loved it and wanted it.  And amazingly, everybody quickly changed gears and started cloning it.  Palm phones fizzled and died.  So did Symbian.  Windows mobile got yet another radical UI change.  The pre-release Android had it's UI completely redone.  The entire smartphone market completely abandoned its direction (copying Palm) and shifted to copying Apple, and now they're all stuck in that rut.

    And that's where we'll be until someone decides to take a chance and invent something truly new.  Maybe it will come from Apple.  Maybe from someone else, but I doubt it will come from a company that has a long history of cloning the competition.  You can't take over a market by cloning the leader, even if you do manage to slip in some incremental changes (more memory, more storage, nicer camera).  You need to leap ahead with something truly new if you want to take over, and I just don't see many companies with the resources (or guts) to make the attempt.
    edited March 2017
  • Reply 6 of 6
    GeorgeBMacGeorgeBMac Posts: 11,421member
    shamino said:
    ...  anybody -- even Samsung -- can make a great gadget.  Rather, it is the Apple ecosystem that is its strength.
    Well, anybody can make a great gadget, but the reality is that very very few actually do.  It's far easier and cheaper to make cheap knock-off copies of what is already successful.

    If you think back to the start of the handheld/mobile era, there were dumb mobile phones and PDAs.  The first really successful PDA, the Palm Pilot and successors, was very innovative.  There wasn't much of an ecosystem at first (but they did make developer tools and specs public, to quickly develop one), but one could argue that its success was due to the fact that it was a truly new device and was extremely easy to use.

    Then everybody jumped on the bandwagon.  So we had PalmOS devices from various vendors, pocket versions of Windows, a few proprietary OS's, etc.  Apple's Newton Message Pad fit in here as well, but nobody really managed to displace Palm's popularity.  Part of it was ecosystem but a lot was because most everybody else (aside from the Newton) wasn't innovative - they were either copying Palm, or they were trying to port system software from other platforms.

    The smartphone era really got started when Handspring combined a Palm PDA with a phone.  Yes, there were Blackberries before that, but they were (and continued to be) a niche product, never gaining the massive followings that others did.  Once the Palm phones shipped, then we started seeing everybody else do the same - Windows phones, Symbian phones, and a bunch with proprietary operating systems.

    Until the iPhone.  It was the innovative new player that took the market away from everybody else.  It introduced a new UI, designed around touch screens (no more stylus or keyboards) and was fully integrated with Apple's Mac/iPod infrastructure.  The interesting thing here is that the first generation iPhone was not, from a feature comparison standpoint, as good as the others - it had a slow processor, only 2G connectivity, only supported one US carrier, and could not (without hacking) run more apps than the ones that were bundled with it.  But that didn't seem to matter - everybody loved it and wanted it.  And amazingly, everybody quickly changed gears and started cloning it.  Palm phones fizzled and died.  So did Symbian.  Windows mobile got yet another radical UI change.  The pre-release Android had it's UI completely redone.  The entire smartphone market completely abandoned its direction (copying Palm) and shifted to copying Apple, and now they're all stuck in that rut.

    And that's where we'll be until someone decides to take a chance and invent something truly new.  Maybe it will come from Apple.  Maybe from someone else, but I doubt it will come from a company that has a long history of cloning the competition.  You can't take over a market by cloning the leader, even if you do manage to slip in some incremental changes (more memory, more storage, nicer camera).  You need to leap ahead with something truly new if you want to take over, and I just don't see many companies with the resources (or guts) to make the attempt.
    That's all true... And a pretty good history of the Palm OS to boot.  
    But you're talking about innovation.   I was referring to making a great gadget -- which anybody can do once a market matures.  And that is why there is such a war going on today between Apple's phones and Samsung phones:   Everytime one comes out, the media compare hardware features and proclaims that the latest Samsung is a better gadget than the 6 month old Apple phone.   And, frankly, based strictly on hardware features (which is all they look at), it usually is.   But, it's not a better phone because it lacks Apple's ecosystem behind it.

    And, incidentally, Samsung is starting to get beat at its own game by some of the so called "cheap Chinese" phones who rivaling Samsung hardware feature for feature.
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