If I die, I forgive you: if I recover, we shall see - Spanish proverb
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Apple could be building a budget Iphone
WHILE PUNTERS are laying down bets on the Iphone 5 launch date, rumours of a budget Iphone are gaining some credibility, the sort of credibility that comes from a COO and a CFO sitting down with an analyst to get the story straight.
According to Appleinsider, Apple's COO and CFO, Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer, respectively, had a sit-down with an analyst from RBC Capital Markets, Mike Abramsky, and discussed how a budget Iphone might work out. But of course, we're sure the word 'budget' never crossed anyone's lips.
Instead, the analyst paraphrases the executives and he describes such a chimera as an "innovative, category-killer experience". In other words, Apple neither confirmed nor denied plans for such a device, the executives only made it clear that a lot of thought had gone into the plans for marketing one.
The internet has been rife with speculation about a 'budget' Iphone for the Chinese market, one that would breach the pre-paid phone market without breaking the bank, yet still carry the famous fruit logo on its backside. The name of such a device has shown up as 4S or 4GS, at some web sites, although everyone admits it's just a placeholder for such a device if one ever actually tips up.
To be honest, Iphone contracts in the USA are relatively affordable compared to the rest of the world. In the UK they are still affordable, but less so than in the US. In the rest of the world, including the remainder of Europe, it just isn't cheap - data plans are still expensive and the levels of subsidisation are much lower. You'll simply pay through the nose for the privilege of having an Apple smartphone toy. The Chinese market, is, naturally, more price-sensitive than the western world, and according to the analyst, still relies very much on pay as you go, making it the prime target for Apple's attentions.
We'd like to point out that this has nothing to do with the flood of cheap Android devices that has soaked the european market up to its eyeballs. The facts that Android's share of the market has continued to gain on IOS and Apple is seeing revenues it can't access - the low-cost, prepaid handset kind - might be causing a change of heart in cappuccino-ville.
So just in case it does happen, you now know that it'll be 'innovative' and a 'category-killer experience'. µ
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Apple is making record profits - because they make products desirable enough to justify their huge (by industry standards) margin.
Apple is simply not interested in swimming in the commoditised cesspool - where margins are almost non-existant. Remember how everyone said that Apple needed to produce a netbook, otherwise they were "Doomed - doomed, I tell you"? They said they couldn't do a decent machine for $500 - and out came the Air at considerably more (and sold millions).
Are Apple losing market share? In one obvious sense - yes (though Android may still be vulnerable to patent traps). But is market share as important as it once was? I (and many others) would argue that it ain't.
As long as you are profitable for developers, then you will flourish. And iOS appears so far to be significantly more profitable than Android - maybe all those cheapskates who like budget handsets based on a free OS aren't so keen on paying for apps, eh?
I think it far more likely that Apple will morph the iPod Touch into a 3G-capable version (like the iPad) - meaning that people can get all the internet-connectivity goodness (and Skype) when they're away from WiFi. This lets Apple get away with reusing a lot of iPhone 3GS and 4 parts, while the iPhone 5 gets the A5 processor, bigger screen, etc.
Stop trolling. HTC, Samsung and others are making plenty of money producing Android phones. There's hardly a 'race to the bottom' when phones like the Galaxy S II roundly trounce anything Apple has produced.
Apple's other Steve. Wozniak, that is. He'll come back, dethrone Steve, uh, Jobs and transform Apple into a more open company. And then there will be rainbows and happiness, in that order.
Except he won't. The smartphone market is simply outgrowing Apple. They're not selling less or making less money, no, they're making more of the stuff. I don't see them changing their strategy. Apple doesn't do strategy, they do products that make everyone else change theirs.
Didn't Apple just make record profits ??
How many Android makers are making money? seems only people making money is google as the android manufacturers race to the bottom.
We saw Apple go through this same scenario in the 1990s: first it was able to point to how fantastically profitable it was, even as it continued to lose market share; then it tried to bring out “budget” products, but it was never quite able to keep up with the market and stanch that market-share haemorrhage; eventually its profits collapsed, and it took Steve Jobs to come in and bail the company out.
Who will come to its rescue this time?