iPhone Latest News

As my colleagues here have noted, there’s strong talk that Apple are about to release a cheaper version of the iPhone 4:

Apple is preparing to release a cheaper 8-gigabyte iPhone 4 for launch within the next few weeks, to complement the iPhone 5.

Asian suppliers say it will be cheaper than the 16- and 32-gigabyte models and use flash memory. The device is expected to sell alongside the iPhone 5 as a replacement for the iPhone 3GS.

The point, the strategy behind this, is that the iPhone is simply too expensive for large parts of the market. Those parts being many of the people in developing markets. But of course, Apple doesn’t want to reduce the prices that we rich world people are willing to pay for a phone: that would be silly, leaving money that Apple could have had on the table.

So it makes perfect sense to introduce a “lower grade” of iPhone at a lower price point. Thus they can still charge us what we’re willing to pay for the top end models and also start making inroads into those developing markets.

Which is rather what I said a week ago:

A sufficiently large number of these phones have been sold that we’re seeing local apps for local needs being developed: the start of a self-reinforcing process. This is great news for Kenyans and East Africans, of course. The people it might cause a problem for are Apple. If Apple decides that the iPhone is always going to be a high end product then those vast and currently underserved markets in the developing world are going to remain closed to them.

I would, of course, dearly love to be able to say that it was my warning of that week ago which has led to Apple’s upcoming release. You know, fear and tremble at the power of the Worstall in the tech marketplace?

Unfortunately, given the length of time it takes to design, source the components for, manufacture and get ready to distribute, a new phone, I have to reveal that this would not be a true claim. Rather, that Apple managed to grasp this point, oooh, 6 months before I did?

[Thanks: http://www.forbes.com]