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"Developing markets" don't buy $400 phones, they buy $20 phones. A smart phone without storage is a dumb idea.

Right, which is why Apple keeps emphasizing China as the market they need to increase their efforts in....

There are a lot of people, and a lot of rich people in non-Western markets. Apple realizes that is the next big growth vector for them.
 
I have a feeling that 4GB or even 2GB of storage is enough for "most" users that simply want to use their phone with a few apps.
Maybe, though I think most people would need at least 8 GB. And remember, the original iPhone was offered with 4 and 8 GB, after about two months, they stopped selling the 4 GB version because nobody bought it (though that was the early adopter crowd which likely was coming from existing iPod users).
 
This story is a bunch of non-sense. So far I haven't seen any iPhone 5 rumors or low-cost iPhone that sound plausible. There is already a low-cost iPhone, it is called iPhone 3GS. Last time I checked it costs $49.
 
Perfect for fans of Rent-A-Center, buyers of $99 ink jet printers, and people who buy homes with zero down payment.

Sadly, I think there's an audience for this. ^_^;

Excuse YOU! I happen to have a $79 ePrint printer that works PER-FECT-LY and suffices all of my printing needs, for those rare occasions where I may need to print out a pair of movie tickets, some return label or a boarding pass.

Additionally, the phone suggested in this article would be ideal for someone like my mother, who who doesn't put music, pictures or video into her phone and only cares for Safari, Facebook, email, and Bejeweled but appreciates Apple's simplicity and elegance. Think out the box, buddy!

Your stereotyping is repulsive. And, no, I won't be buying the poor man's iPhone.
 
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Storage isn't that much nowadays, and paying for all that data on a pre-pay plain?

Even though apple is not responsible for what carriers charge, it could do damage to apples brand whe the first bunch of users complain about thier huge data costs!!
 
I don't want any of data in the "cloud". Ugh! I really want to know the specs of the new iPhone before getting the BB Torch 2. :(
 
Perfect for fans of Rent-A-Center, buyers of $99 ink jet printers, and people who buy homes with zero down payment.

Sadly, I think there's an audience for this. ^_^;

Nothing wrong with putting 0 down on a house. The problem is buying a $500,000 house just because you qualified (not necessarily can afford it.) Enter the reason why people are losing the houses they bought left and right. They never could afford them in the first place.
 
How does this rumor make any sense?

1) iCloud does not interface with Windows.
What do you mean? It interfaces with iTunes. What's the relevance of Windows to cloud storage and a cheap iPhone?
2) The purpose of a low cost phone is to tap the developing markets, which are largely prepaid. Very few prepaid services offer reasonable data plans.
That's what the purpose has *traditionally* been. But that doesn't mean Apple can't redefine the market. Who said anything about prepaid services? The rumor suggests a low-cost iPhone. To me, this means an iPhone that costs <$100.

3) 3G internet speeds are not sufficient for vast amounts of media streaming.
#1 Who said that it needs to stream everything? #2 Have you used Amazon's cloud player? #3 Do you stream YouTube? #4 Flickr/Picasa/Facebook?

I think there are too many assumptions being made about this rumored phone. Here's what I could imagine Apple doing: Create an iPhone that they can sell for under $100 by slashing the flash storage to only be say 4 GB. All of your photos/videos/music would be stored on iCloud. Maybe only a portion of your collection is kept locally. Let's say there's a setting that allows you to either manually determine what, or automatically set it to files that you've viewed/watched/listened to in the last 90 days. If you haven't accessed them, then the phone clears it from local storage (but of course can easily be re-downloaded from the cloud).

This would serve two purposes - one to save on the cost of building an iPhone. I suspect Apple knows that most people don't come anywhere close to actually fully utilizing all 16/32 GB. On top of that Apple will probably have to slash a few other hardware features to get it to whatever is cheap enough for a "low-price" iPhone. But they would probably also compensate by making it a super light/small/thin phone (i.e. iPhone Air/Nano?) so it doesn't just feel like an inferior iPhone.

The second purpose is to get everyone to depend on iCloud to store everything. Voila. In one fell swoop, Apple would take a commanding lead in the cloud market.
 
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Right, which is why Apple keeps emphasizing China as the market they need to increase their efforts in....

There are a lot of people, and a lot of rich people in non-Western markets. Apple realizes that is the next big growth vector for them.

THIS!

Being American I of course think the world revolves around me. However Apple is a global company will adjust accordingly. The China market has very impressive growth potential for Apple. I honestly do not know much about phone & service plan pricing in China, but I'm sure Apple does.
 
There is already a low-cost iPhone, it is called iPhone 3GS. Last time I checked it costs $49.

No it doesn't. That is the subsidized price. There are large areas of the world where people doesn't buy contract wrapped phones. They are primarily contract free markets. In those markets the iPhone is severly hampered in effectiveness. Sure there are some who will "spend anything" to get one but that isn't a sizable fraction of the market. A sizable market which Android (or RIM or Microsoft ) will gladly fill if Apple does not.

Go to the ATT online or physical store and look at the "contract free" price. That is the price of the 3GS.
 
As stated by many before - a subsidized the phone cost is just a small part of the total cost of ownership. Most US customers usually get the subsidized iPhone at $199 and then pay ~$75 a month for phone/data/text for 24 months. So their 2 year cost is ~$1750. Even if iPhones were free it would still cost $1500+

A lower cost iPhone only works if there there is the ability to get more flexible plans. Those who don't want data shouldn't have to pay for data. Those who don't want voice shouldn't have to pay for voice etc.

I don't either, but in the age of data caps and expensive plans for large amounts of data I am guessing the wireless carriers would make a handsome profit on this phone.:)

It's geared developing countries (starting with China). Data plans in China are cheap compared to the US. Unicom released a $10 iPhone plan recently. In Indonesia, some plans are even cheaper $7 (voice, sms, unlimited data).

.
 
Screwing the MobileMe users further.

Please explain? It's easy to use invective, I know, but how about communicating your position with facts and logic?

Personally, Apple has done what was required. It is offering a prorated refund to anyone who wants to cancel now or any time until their subscription ends. And for those that want to stick with MobileMe until the bitter end it is giving those users 6 months of 100% free service.

The way I understand the derogatory term "screwing," they Apple is handling the transition does not fall into that category, but if you disagree I'd love to know specifically why.
 
There's something to this

There's something to this, but I don't see it happening as replacement for or addition to the iPhone product line.
This may indicate that Apple is trying to strike better data deals with carriers for users of Apple's products or that iPods will potentially get 3G access to iCloud services only or some other new arrangement between Cupertino and carriers.
 
The cheaper iPhone is probably just going to be the iPhone 4 with 8GB or 16GB of Storage - 16 if the iPhone 5 starts at 32GB for the low end.

Maybe a very slight redesign.

Maybe they'll still keep the iPhone 3GS?

But probably just a regular iPhone 4 alongside the iPhone 5 lol
 
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doesnt the apple iCloud let u "redownload" and not rly "stream" music? wouldnt that still require internal storage? plus how would apps work

I'm still convinced that the "file" that is synced as far as music goes will be your "iTunes Library.xml" file. The music itself will indeed stream although Apple will make it so seamless it will appear that all your music is "on" your iPhone and they will never use the word "stream" or admit that's essentially what is happening. Look no further than how :apple:TV behaves. They'll call it "magic play" and will send their full store version for songs you've purchased, your version for other songs you've uploaded to iCloud, and their full store version matches to your Library for those paying for iTunes Match.

This rumor, although probably nothing more than a rumor this year, is certainly something that will happen in the not-so-distant future. It's clearly the way things are moving. I imagined this the first time I used an iPod...wouldn't it be great if this little gadget wasn't limited by 5GB internal storage and could simply stream everything from my computer? Someday...
 
This story is a bunch of non-sense. So far I haven't seen any iPhone 5 rumors or low-cost iPhone that sound plausible. There is already a low-cost iPhone, it is called iPhone 3GS. Last time I checked it costs $49.
No, contract-free it costs about $580 (before taxes). The carriers just give you a credit of $530, which you pay back over two years, including interest that might be about $25 per month.

http://store.apple.com/uk/configure/MC637B/A?select=select&product=MC637B/A&mco=MTgxNTgyMjk
 
Doesn't make sense

Didn't an article on here say that Apple WANTS people to buy devices with LARGER amounts of storage BECAUSE of expensive data plans, so they are less relying on streaming to get media. Anyway Apple knows that 3G sucks, that why they still haven't enabled certain features like Facetime on 3G. I'm not going to repeat what others have said except i agree with them. This seems stupid, stupid, stupid. But i guess we've all been kinda thinking Apple's been doing goofy stuff (No optical drive in mac mini, the OSX Lion installation method, UI changes in Lion, ... etc)
 
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Huracan said:
This story is a bunch of non-sense. So far I haven't seen any iPhone 5 rumors or low-cost iPhone that sound plausible. There is already a low-cost iPhone, it is called iPhone 3GS. Last time I checked it costs $49.

the iphone 4 costs 1€ here :p
 
How does this rumor make any sense?

1) iCloud does not interface with Windows.

"Some features of iCloud require .... a PC with Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Outlook 2007 or 2010 recommended).
http://www.apple.com/icloud/

I don't think Apple thinks so.

The dominate iTunes platform is Windows.

Certainly, non Apple apps streaming documents up to the iCloud will be more rare on Windows. But buried on one of the slides at the announcement was that there was going to be developer libraries for both Mac OS X and Windows.
 
Steve: "OK team, we can't $#@! refer to the iPad 3 as a $#@! iPad 3. We need something to keep those $#@! rumor sites off the $#@! scent. Any $#@! ideas?"

Phil: "iCloud iPhone?"

Steve: "That's so $#@! idiotic it's $#@! brilliant! Nice work Phil."
 
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paul4339 said:
As stated by many before - a subsidized the phone cost is just a small part of the total cost of ownership. Most US customers usually get the subsidized iPhone at $199 and then pay ~$75 a month for phone/data/text for 24 months. So their 2 year cost is ~$1750. Even if iPhones were free it would still cost $1500+

A lower cost iPhone only works if there there is the ability to get more flexible plans. Those who don't want data shouldn't have to pay for data. Those who don't want voice shouldn't have to pay for voice etc.

I don't either, but in the age of data caps and expensive plans for large amounts of data I am guessing the wireless carriers would make a handsome profit on this phone.:)

It's geared developing countries (starting with China). Data plans in China are cheap compared to the US. Unicom released a $10 iPhone plan recently. In Indonesia, some plans are even cheaper $7 (voice, sms, unlimited data).

.

they dont have an "US income" tho, 7€ probably equals to what we pay. hell i spent 3 weeks in india and travelled around i 5 star hotels with less than 100 $ total
 
I'm still convinced that the "file" that is synced as far as music goes will be your "iTunes Library.xml" file. The music itself will indeed stream although Apple will make it so seamless it will appear that all your music is "on" your iPhone and they will never use the word "stream" or admit that's essentially what is happening.

If I change my iTunes music on my device through iCloud then leave WiFi I'm pretty sure the music remains on the device, so I'm not sure what you're saying here.
 
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