Get a life.
It's a $199 or $99 phone with a contract. No one over 20 years old gives a flying **** what phone you carry. If you think it's a status symbol, then it confirms you're pretty low status and that one costs at least your daily salary.
heh heh, that is because you have never travel outside of US. In place like China, the average salary for an auto worker is about $300 USD a month. And that is middle class salary. And contract work very differently in 3rd world country. They don't pay $70-100 USD a month for data plan. They pay 10-30 USD a months kind of data plan rate and they like to buy their phone and search for best data plan. US consumer are the dumb one letting ATT and Verizon force everyone to pay for high price data plan with the subsidy.
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I wonder if Apple could make a low cost iPhone, but make it in America, and sell it for around the same price as a normal phone, cause labor and all.
The short answer is no. The supply chain will dictate where the manufacturing site will be. It is impractical to ship all the componentd from Asia to US (think about a few weeks in the ship and the additional cost of transportation) and then assemble them here. The labor law here is much stricter and the labor cost are a lot higher (think about the health care cost Apple contractor has to pay in US). And our workers expectation of a job is quite different than Asian or Africa labor pool. Even if the contractor pay a very decent wage, they may not be able to attract enough labor because the job is too boring and too repetitive.
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At $350-$400, how can it be defined a low cost iPhone?
Also, the iPod touch starts at $299 and it's a jewel, so don't tell me that pricing an iPhone at $350-$400 would be a disaster in terms of hardware quality.
$350-$400 seems low just because it's compared to $649, which is a really high price for such a device.
The build won't be a problem but the profit margin for Apple is going to be problematic. Iphone has 50 to 60% gross margin (come out from document in Samsung trial). Low cost Iphone will have at best 20-30% gross margin.