The 5c wasn't actually supposed to be cheaper. That's just something some stupid analysts made up.
(Re this rumor, who knows? Kuo is supposed to be the best of the analysts... but that's like being the most honest politician.)
The iPhone 5c was never, ever announced as a cheap alternative. Tech bloggers and business analysts decided it was and publicized it like crazy, Apple themselves never once said that it was going to be cheaper.
Moral of the story: don't believe everything you read.
Really? a plastic phone with its predecessors hardware, that goes for $100 less, launched in parallel with a metallic 5S, which btw contains
real upgrades and keeps the same price point as its predecessor... is
not meant to be a cheaper iphone? So your theory is, because they didn't
explicitly say it was meant to be a cheaper iPhone, the 5C is not - even when the phone
itself implies it? Did they just intend to fulfill the deep desire of millions of consumers for plastic crocs-looking iPhone? Seriously...
Moral of the story: don't expect to
read about
everything you see. (of course Apple's ego wont let them
publicly say they are putting out cheaper products!)
But I digress... IMO if Apple wants to go mainstream - past a 10-15% computer market share worldwide (currently they hold less than 8%) - they should do something really new in terms of brand positioning - instead of these half ass measures that just cheapen existing products but keep margins and prices high. If they don't want to do that, and keep being a premium product to justify those margins, then just stop messing around with the idea. But they just cant have it both ways: dramatically increase sales volumes
and keeping the current margins and brand position. Thinking so seems as a strategy right out of Steve Jobs' legendary distortion field.