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Just put a 3G chip and A4 chip on an iPod touch and sell it. The iPhone5 can have the A5, no problem with that.
iPod touch also means: no GPS, no compass.
 
On the issue of fragmentation, fragmentation is not only about screen size. A cheaper iPhone without a GPS would also lead to fragmentation. An iPod with a front facing camera will lead to fragmentation. The release of the iPhone 5 will lead to fragmentation.

Maybe not as severe as different screen sizes, but fragmentation non the less.
 
It's never a good idea to try an undercut the product it results in cheaper quality. Which leaves you with unsatisfied customers and a whole lot of returns & complaints. You gotta have a set standard your not going to meet everyone's price range. If this were the case we'd all be driving a cheaper Porsche & Ferrari.
 
It's never a good idea to try an undercut the product it results in cheaper quality. Which leaves you with unsatisfied customers and a whole lot of returns & complaints. You gotta have a set standard your not going to meet everyone's price range. If this were the case we'd all be driving a cheaper Porsche & Ferrari.

A majority of Ferrari is owned by Fiat and majority of Porsche is owned by Volkswagen. They are both luxury brands owned by another car company. So I guess that would be like, for instance, Acer or HP buying Apple and using it as their luxury brand.

When it comes to tablets and phones, Apple will make more money from selling adds, apps, and services than from selling just the phones. The car analogy would be if the car maker also would make a profit from selling the gas. If that would be true, then the ones making the boring, cheap, cars would make a lot more money than those selling the expensive high performance cars.
 
It's never a good idea to try an undercut the product it results in cheaper quality. Which leaves you with unsatisfied customers and a whole lot of returns & complaints. You gotta have a set standard your not going to meet everyone's price range. If this were the case we'd all be driving a cheaper Porsche & Ferrari.

duh, people are driving cheaper porsches. they are called volkswagens. it's like acuras are nothing more than hondas with all leather and different body panels

it's like upselling in fast food. only in cars they put in $2000 worth of better parts, different engine program, and charge you an extra $40,000 with a different name and rebrand the replacement parts with a different name and twice the cost
 
To add, I don't see, as many other seem, a reason for Apple to make cheap laptops or desktop computers since the market, and the possibilities, for these are quite different than those for tablets or smart phones. If Apple would be able to get a walled garden on these segments, and be able to control and charge for what consumers buy and install, then that would obviously change.
 
Exactly. I'd love an iPhone but with my Virgin Mobile PAYG plan, I pay only $25 a month. Why would I want to spend more than three times that? I wouldn't mind shelling out $200 for a phone but see no point in paying for minutes, texts and data time that I will never use.

Perfectly said. Once on a contract, never again. I'm not subsidizing all those non-stop yappers again. Paying for actual use is the only fair thing and I'll wait for that.
 
Perfectly said. Once on a contract, never again. I'm not subsidizing all those non-stop yappers again. Paying for actual use is the only fair thing and I'll wait for that.

i just looked at the details and with no mobile to mobile and no nights and weekend minutes it's going to cost the same or more than what i pay AT&T on my family plan now
 
Apple has never in the last decade or so said, "We don't want our products to be just for the rich." They have always marketed themselves on being a "premium brand". I wonder where they are going from here.

cite your data. cuz i seem to recall the past decade being FULL of cheap ipods...

So you think apple almost went bankrupt by selling low MSRP/low margin Macs?

Not exactly what I remember.

a number of factors went into it, one big one being the non-Jobs decision to licensee the OS to clones.

what do you remember?

most people don't care

my wife's iphone4 rarely goes above 200MB per month. almost every woman in NYC with an iphone is only using it for facebook and a few other low bandwidth apps. they don't care about games and the 300,000 other apps out there. you give them a cheap android phone with a big blue F on the main screen and they will buy it instead of an iphone

er, then what's stopping them? *that already exists*.

there is a 200mb data plan. my gf is on it for that very reason.
 
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cite your data. cuz i seem to recall the past decade being FULL of cheap ipods...

Mp3-players as a product, are rather cheap compared to smart phones, laptops, etc. But I wouldn't say that the players made by Apple have been cheap compared to the rest. Only Apple would have been to get away with what they asked for the Shuffle.

Apple didn't sell iPods by selling them cheaply. They did it because people wanted the brand and because it's easier for a lot more people to pay for the cost of an iPod than it is for them to pay the total cost for an iPhone and the data plan.
 
It sounds like the rhetoric has changed and Cook is basically in charge now. Apple has never in the last decade or so said, "We don't want our products to be just for the rich." They have always marketed themselves on being a "premium brand". I wonder where they are going from here.
This is good news for Apple. It began with their entry into their alliance with Walmart. Selling in mass does a lot to insure Apples ever growing appeal to seniors. They are perfectly suited to the Apple Eco-system.

Easy to use devices like the iPad are ideal and comfortable for seniors. A smaller cheaper iPhone with a very limited feature set will be very appealing to them. No other manufacturer owns the seniors so it makes perfect sense for Apple to continue to target them.

They will bring in word of mouth to Apple as well. Seniors tend to be fiercely loyal, the brilliant marketing man he is, at an aging 55 it's a group Jobs can relate to.
 
i just looked at the details and with no mobile to mobile and no nights and weekend minutes it's going to cost the same or more than what i pay AT&T on my family plan now

You must talk/text a lot. I and many others out there don't and that's why we want reasonably priced PAYG plans. Why should we subsidize you?
 
i end up using a lot of the "free" night and weekend minutes and mobile to mobile minutes. the 700 anytime minutes on the plan are used by my in laws. my inlaws are due for an upgrade and maybe i'll talk to them into breaking the family plan we have and going virgin mobile. for a family plan all the cheap cell companies are about the same or within $10 or $20 a month so i never bothered to switch
 
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er, then what's stopping them? *that already exists*.

there is a 200mb data plan. my gf is on it for that very reason.

you're missing the point

with the iphone and AT&T you still pay $70 a month or so plus the cost of the phone. with virgin mobile it's as low as $25 a month because Virgin isn't paying a subsidy to LG for the phones

if all you want is facebook and some other simple features and you're single this is a killer deal
 
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