Hilarious. The 5C is still going to be a fantastic phone. What do you mean by catering to the bottom of the barrel? People or product?
They are pushing into a larger market with a economically made high-end iPhone. Sounds very smart to me.
People or product? BOTH. They no longer worry about launching the BEST in each segment they participate, and THEN being successful at that - they are running after market share with a device that is already crippled before even being launched.
And yes, this trend had ALREADY started with the non-retina iPad mini, even though yields were more than sufficient and market demand was clearly in that direction. The end result? A considerable fall in normal iPad sales in favor of the lower-margin mini (as opposed to a higher-priced mini with retina) while at the same time leaving the high-end to the Samsungs of the world.
And all of those devices involved compromising on features in order to meet a lower price point. This isn't new.
WRONG. Each and every one of those devices constituted the best in its respective segment. Even the puny Shuffle suffers no competition from the rest. The premise was NEVER to compromise on features; it was to build the best possible device within a given segment, which is surely not the iPhone 5C's premise now.
Again, what make you thing that the lower cost iPhone won't be the best in their respective segments?
As much as I hate Android and everything that it represents, it is a FACT that not even the current iPhone 5 is the best in its class feature-wise, period. To launch an iPhone 5C with the aim of catering to "emerging markets" is a magnified nonsense that not only misunderstands the wealth and sheer size of those markets (particularly China and Brazil), but also ignores the fact that, price-wise, the 5C will only be slightly cheaper than its bigger/better brother.
The two countries mentioned above have HUGE domestic markets and MILLIONS of people richer than any average US or European citizen. At the same time, the relatively high tariffs of countries like Brazil completely defeat the purpose of a "cheaper" phone which will, in the end, cost almost as much as the already successful iPhone 5.
Apple has no reason to do it, but Cook continues to follow anal-ysts instead of leading the market.
Yeah. It was the top of the line iPod that was plastic.
And the original iPod shuffle.
You know I am NOT talking about plastic per se - I am just saying that Apple is launching a manifestly cheaper and crippled phone that won't hold water to other average Android phones out there.
I think a lot of the features of the iPhone 5C with plastic are convenient for Apple. As many others mentioned, the 30-pin connector could be retired. It would be easier for Apple's suppliers to have this phone assembled in places other than China, say Brazil. That might help Apple sell more phones in places where there would otherwise be extremely high tariffs. I think it would also be easier for Apple to swap out a chipset if that would help get the phone on say China Mobile. (I still contend the last thing China wants is a de facto Qualcomm monopoly on LTE baseband chipsets.)
Brazil ALREADY produces iPhones; the iPhone 5C will change little in that regard.