Apple working on a cheaper iPhone for emerging markets, may surface in late 2013
Apple has started to feel the heat as it’s biggest rival Samsung continues to enhance it’s dominance in the smartphone space. Samsung, which earlier dominated the sales mainly in the Asian markets has of late seen immense success in the US with it’s flagship devices like the Galaxy S3 and the Galaxy Note 2. Apple is now reportedly working on a cheaper variant of the iPhone and hopes to tap the emerging markets with the new device in order to boost it’s sales and increase it’s market share.
To keep the costs of the rumored iPhone low, Apple would most probably use plastic instead of the aluminum casing and other less expensive internal components. The cheaper iPhone could surface sometime in late 2013 and is expected to cost less than half of the current iPhone 5′s price.
According to the latest report on Bloomberg, the Cupertino-based giant has been working on a cheaper variant of the iPhone since at least February last year and is in talks with a top wireless carrier in the US regarding these plans.
Smartphones running on Google’s Android OS accounted for around 75 percent of total smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2012, which is sharp increase from the 58 percent shipments during the same time in 2011 whereas the iPhone was confined to just 15 percent of the total smartphone shipments in Q3 2012.
While Google announced that over 500 million Android devices have been activated since it’s debut four years ago, Apple has managed to sell “only” 271 million iPhones till date.
If the rumors indeed turn out to be true, it would mark the diversification of Apple’s smartphone lineup which until now was just confined to a single model being upgraded at regular intervals. Apple at present tries to lure the budget-conscious smartphone buyer by reducing the prices of it’s older models
However, not everyone is talking good about the rumored, cheap iPhone. Many experts believe that by introducing a cheaper variant of the iPhone, Apple would somewhat diminish it’s premium image and the new device might also dent the company’s profit margins as people might be drifted towards buying the cheaper variant.
