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Cheaper iPhone in the Making?

R

rohit6060

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 22, 2010
97
0
With iCloud announced and a growing android base do you guys feel a cheaper iphone can be announced sometime soon?
The reason I say this is because majority of the raw material cost goes to screen and memory.Now,everythng on cloud apple can surely launch a iphone with 4gb-16gb memory and may be with a screen resolution of iphone 3gs.An iPhone with a A4 chip and above said features with a price point of $300-$400 surely make a good product.
What do u guys feel???
 
Apple are trying to innovate with iCloud, but I don't see it being as important as having it replace the current physical memories on the iPhone. Mainly because data rates are still very expensive.

Apple are known for keeping their prices static anyway, what you pay is what you get. And even so, they just recently started selling unlocked phones publicly, all iPhones until now have been subsidized by their respective carriers.
 
Agree...But tim cook was noted saying that they r serious about some asian markets which r predominantly pre paid markets and thus to pick up volumes in thez countries there seems to be a demand for unlocked and reasonably priced devices...
Secondly,if the size of screen increases from current 3.5" to rumored 4" then I guess it may suddenly give a negative sense to the developers who might have been writing codes according to 3.5" screen only.
What I assume is that may apple launches an up-to-date iphone 5 but will still keep iphone 4 in market may be with a lowered price point...This seems a logical action as of now...
 
We will most likely see the discontinuation of the 3GS, just like the current model 3GS-4, we might just have 4-5. Regarding prepaid market, perhaps that might be the reason Apple just recently introduced unlocked iPhones in their stores... I doubt any of this will get cheaper though. If anything, they'll get more expensive (seeing how we will most likely get dual core and a 4"? on the '5)
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)

I really don't see a 4" screen coming. I've had every phone available for Verizon, including all droids, tbolt, charge, and everything else. One I used those and came back, 3.5inches doesn't feel awkward or even small. I really don't think the display will change seeing as how it was updated just last year. The retina is still one of, if not the top tier display available. So not sure if they're plannning on doing it, also not sure if it's needed at this point.
 
Ksizzle9 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_8 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E401 Safari/6533.18.5)

I really don't see a 4" screen coming. I've had every phone available for Verizon, including all droids, tbolt, charge, and everything else. One I used those and came back, 3.5inches doesn't feel awkward or even small. I really don't think the display will change seeing as how it was updated just last year. The retina is still one of, if not the top tier display available. So not sure if they're plannning on doing it, also not sure if it's needed at this point.
Click to expand...

Agree x1000. I had a Droid X with a 4.3" screen, and I just switched to an iPhone. Doesn't feel awkward or weird at all, I actually like it. It's strange because the iPhone's screen seems really big. (3.5 display with 960x640 = awesome)

Steve Jobs even said "No one wants some monstrosity huge phone" or something of that sort. On top of it all, the iPhones selling point is the retina 326 ppi display. Upgrade that to 4" and bye, bye quality. Even if they up the resolution, ALL the apps would have to change as well or it'd look like crap. There's just too much going on right now for them to do that


On topic: Go to Apple's website, and you'll notice the aluminum and glass trend across their product line. You'll also notice the high prices. Apple is a premium company, and take Steve Job's quote for it. "We dont ship junk!" I highly doubt they'd ever release some cheap plastic phone or whatever. They've never done it before, and they've made a name for themselves with their high quality products. I don't see it happening.
 
Last edited:
rohit6060 said:
With iCloud announced and a growing android base do you guys feel a cheaper iphone can be announced sometime soon?
The reason I say this is because majority of the raw material cost goes to screen and memory.Now,everythng on cloud apple can surely launch a iphone with 4gb-16gb memory and may be with a screen resolution of iphone 3gs.An iPhone with a A4 chip and above said features with a price point of $300-$400 surely make a good product.
What do u guys feel???
Click to expand...
You can already get a new(ish) 3GS for $49. I'm not sure how cheap you want. All the money is in the 2 year plan you must sign up for.

That and there's no money in a cheap phone market. Apple has no incentive to even bother.
 
Cheaper iPhone rumour is spread by Eldar Murtazin.

It's absolutely baseless, he knows Nokia stuff, Samsung stuff and some HTC but he has 0 credibility with Apple.

There is simply no reason for a cheap iPhone, cause there is one already, 3GS. Then it'll be 4 when the 5th gen comes out.

Apple is a premium company, they don't have cheap laptops or desktops, and they're doing fine, why would they have cheap phones? With Apple you pay a premium price, but you get what you pay for.
 
Apple's previous generation iPhones are the cheap iPhones. Especially the 3GS at the $49 price point (which will be supported with iOS 5).

I don't imagine Apple wanting to brand iPhones at $0.99 on a 2 year contract or anything cheap like that.

I think their current method of pricing the latest iPhone at $199 and the previous generation at $99 helps them capture a lot of consumers. Their only problem is that they are not available on all carriers, like Android.
 
I think that Apple will eventually drop the price of the iPhones by $100.

Whether that's this year or next or the next, I don't know, but I don't think it'll be a smaller cheaper model. They'll just lower the price like they did when the 3G came out.

Eventually the new, subsidized iPhones will cost $99 and $199 and 'last year's' model will be free.
 
Since iOS 5 supports 3GS

I am assuming the

3GS remains at 49$

4 at 99$ and 149$ a few months after the release of iphone 5

5 at 199$ and 299$

Apple is a trusted and reliable company, I'm sure they wouldn't produce cheap phones to devalue their reputation.
 
ratzzo said:
...they just recently started selling unlocked phones publicly, all iPhones until now have been subsidized by their respective carriers.
Click to expand...

In the United States. * :D We've always been able to buy them unlocked in Canada directly from an Apple store and online.

Unlocked iPhones have also been available in Europe and Mexico, as well as other regions.
 
As far as I remember Apple have expressed that they only want to make high end products and see no point in venturing into cheap devices. If you want a cheap iPhone, get last years model.
 
Music is not going to be streamed from iCloud, at least at this point, so you will still need as much memory or even more on your device to store all of your content.

EDIT: I guess you could selectively choose what you want or don't want on your device at any given time though. It just seems a lot of people have this idea that with iCloud the need for physical memory will be eliminated.
 
I quite agree to you guys.I myself use a mac,itouch etc. and a "cheaper" product is surely not smthng which apple likes to make.A cheaper iphone will surely bring a bad name to apple.I think the general trend of offering the last gen. iphone at cheaper price will go on.
Considering that a possibility how much price drop do you see in $649 unlocked iphone?
And lets not forget $49/$199 is with a contract,the actual price you are paying is more than $600 for every iphone u buy which is in no way cheap(although,it need not be!!!)
The reason I ask u guys is because I'm not from US and thez plans in my country are not so cheap.Its always better to buy an unlocked iphone,I feel!!!
 
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