wanderso

While the focus of this article is specific to iPhone pricing in China, I believe that Apple needs to revive an entry level iPhone in their lineup that isn’t simply continuing to produce last year’s model at a lower price.   Much of the internals can still be from the old phone, but having something that is new to this less expensive phone brings appeal to budget conscious buyers.  I realize that the XR could be said to fulfill that, but it still isn’t quite at the right price point for what I am meaning.  

Why do this?  Apple is attempting a further shift towards services.  There is a hardware $$ barrier of entry to these services set by the prices for Apple premium products.  By having “budget friendly” options, the potential base for these services greatly expands.  One may argue that budget conscious buyers may be less apt to buy these services, but people on tighter budgets seem to always find a means to pay for entertainment options (for example) at the level that they can afford.  If Apple services were strong enough from a product sales mix perspective, they could sell the phones at much lower margins and make up the difference (and more!) through this strategy.   Apple’s huge cash horde allows them to consider to enter a market with deeper investments than virtually all of their competitors. Sometimes these investments come in the form of less margin.  
If Apple does not do this, their services uptick will not reach the dominance that they could. 

She sounds to have many qualities of a capable executive, along with some very helpful prior experiences for this new role.  One cannot rise through roles like this and last as long as she has without the respect of her team as well. 

Don’t worry. If Apple somehow designs and produces their own modem, Qualcomm will find some way to claim it uses Qualcomm-patented technology.

Classic money grab attempt from New York and to capture headlines for political reasons. 

I wish it really was purely about consumer protection. 

I’m sure they will end up being called iGlasses.