Apple Plans Cheaper Nano-Based iPhone 343
bigkahunafish writes "It seems Apple is planning a cheaper version of the iPhone possibly based on the iPod Nano. This phone would be priced below $300 making it more affordable than the $500-600 iPhone. This should bring Apple phone technology into the hands of more users, though this cheaper phone could have more limited functionality. From the article: 'Sales of the [original] iPhone are expected to be limited to a small percentage of the market due to its high price tag, particularly in the United States where 85 percent of consumers tend to spend $100 or less on cell phones. But analysts forecast that a cheaper phone from Apple, which leads the digital music player market, could pose a much bigger threat to long-established phone makers such as Nokia, Motorola Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Ericsson, owned by Sony Corp and Ericsson.' I just hope they don't make a phone based on the iPod Shuffle."
Nano Based? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ooooh, I see, Apple has filed phone related patents that utilize a scroll wheel, just like the iPod nano. Never mind that every other iPod(minus the shuffle) also has a scroll wheel.
Any
changing the normal pricing model (Score:5, Insightful)
I've explained to these colleagues that there is no way this will happen. Apple's products never become cheaper, they just release new "generations" and keep the price about the same. They fill the gap with less functional products. This method is true for their desktops (Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini), notebooks (MacBook Pro, Macbook) and their iPods (iPod, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle); it only stands to reason that it will be true for iPhones, too.
And since the batteries aren't replacable in the iPhones, after two years, you won't want to get a used one. This locks their customers into the current $500-$600 units forever, as you wouldn't want to buy a used one in 1 1/2 years.
Will this work in the cell phone market? I'm not sure, but I'm certain that there will never be a "free iPhone with 2 year activation" type promotion.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do i want an iPhone? (Score:1, Insightful)
Are people that obsessed over the new type of touch screen?
Won't be Nano-sized, though (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm waiting for the iPhone Shuffle (Score:1, Insightful)
Slashdot sinks further into uselessness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:changing the normal pricing model (Score:5, Insightful)
cell service for two years -- $1500
Battery (physical part, typical retail) -- $30
Battery (Apple replacement service cost, minus typical part cost) -- $60
Conclusion: the extra costs of the battery replacement service represent about 3.2% of TCO for someone who wishes to buy a used iPhone. Anyone who decides not to purchase a used iPhone based on the built-in battery is an idiot.
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it will steal some market share from the phone makers, but we should all assume that they aren't idiots. What they all have in common is great income and plenty of money to spend on development. Why would they just watch Apple steal everything from them? It's one thing to conquer the mp3 player market, but significantly harder to conquer the mobile phone market.
I am one hundred percent certain that at least a couple of these companies will bring out very competitive products very soon, possibly this year. I also have no doubt that Apple will continue to develop great products, but I just don't see the same iPod era in the cell phone market like so many people think.
Two pieces connected by a cord? (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm not sure I see how they can make the thing more than incrementally cheaper.
They can't make the screen smaller without turning the iPhone into something like an ordinary cell phone. And then you don't get any of the breakthrough advantages of the iPhone user interface. It would just be a Motorola ROKR with an Apple logo and, possibly, better iPod functionality.
So far, Apple has been consistently good in avoiding the temptation to put the Apple brand on something that Apple fans like me would perceive to be a cheap piece of crap.
The iPod Shuffle is a good case in point. Before it came out, everyone was speculating that it would have a tiny, i.e. unusable screen (like some of the competitive
I'm darned if I see how they can make a much smaller, cheaper iPhone without falling into that trap.
Re:iPhone Shuffle (Score:5, Insightful)
Rumour fatigue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm waiting for the iPhone Shuffle (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's not the price tag, or the carrier... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:changing the normal pricing model (Score:3, Insightful)
Total time: 15 minutes
Total cost: Probably about $20 including the case tool to open the iPhone
Isn't the iPhone already Nano-based? (Score:5, Insightful)
iPhone: 4GB and 8GB models
Both use flash memory for storage.
From my perspective as a 80GB hard-drive based iPod owner, which iPod exactly is the iPhone based on if it isn't already the Nano?
Why would Apple care about "cannibalizing?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Hold on a minute. In the first place, why would Apple we worried about a $500 or $600 iPhone "eating into iPod sales?"
That sounds like the sort of poisonous big-corporation bozo thinking. People that care more about their division than about either a) the customer, or b) the company as a whole. Like old-time GM, where Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac worried more about each other than about, say, high-quality foreign cars. It's the sort of thinking that leads to artificially holding back new products in order to "milk the cash cow" and extract the last dollar from the older product. To rationalized product lines with exactly seven price points.
That's not the way every company works (remember Digital introducing the MicroVAX II, knowing perfectly well that it wasn't going to "cannibalize" higher-end VAX sales, it was going to vaporize them?) And there's good evidence that it's not the way Apple works. A case in point would be the replacement of the iPod Mini, which was a popular, successful, and well-liked product, with the Nano. There's no evidence at all that Apple was worried about the Nano "cannibalizing" sales of the Mini!
Re:changing the normal pricing model (Score:3, Insightful)
I've explained to these colleagues that there is no way this will happen.
You are correct. I don't see the iPhone ever selling for less than $300 - not a new one anyway. I'm not sure Apple should even go for the under $100 market nor do I think they plan to do so. I took a look just to see what is out there for under $100. The only phones you can get for $100 are giant sized piece of crap phones or you can get a decent phone with a 2 year contract. You can't buy a good unlocked phone for $100 or less. At least not from any of the people I trust who sell phones. The cheapskate and the crybaby "I just want a phone that's a phone" people will never, ever buy iPhones anyway. I don't think it makes good business sense to try to sell to this market anyway. A dumbed down iPhone that could sell for under $100 seems pointless to me. Isn't the point that you can do cool stuff with it? The people who want cheap, featureless phones are a segment Apple would be wise to ignore.
RUMOURS (Score:5, Insightful)
STOP POSTING RUBBISH RUMOURS!
Oh and by the way, if the iPhone is successful, YES there will be follow-up and other models. Look at the iPod. What's new here?
Re:How more limited can you get? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't need MMS. I have a phone that can send an email with an attached photo. My phone is not the problem. Your phone that's incapable of receiving emails with MIME attachments.
The other comments about videos, ringtones, etc. are valid.
Astonishing News! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Buy now... (Score:1, Insightful)
With the MacBook, it's not as big a deal as with the phone, because the laptop improvements are usually more incremental, but I usually wait for an official announcement and then buy. Meanwhile, I'll use the Dell.
Re:The article is wild speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
How many of these "Apple is buying parts/Apple filed an application" articles have there been? So many that it's a joke. [misterbg.org] (That page is several years old--it came out around the time of the first- or second-gen iPod.) Now that multitouch is "out there," Apple can start filing patents on all multitouch-related things without everyone wondering what they're up to.
Everything else is OBVIOUS. OF COURSE Apple will make a better/faster/smaller/cheaper iPhone with more features at some point in the future. Next from JP Morgan: the sky is blue, water is wet. Film at 11.
I stand by my prediction [slashdot.org] that there will NOT be ANY revs to the iPhone before Jan 2008; more likely late Spring or Summer. (Note that this doesn't count improvements to the current iPhone, like a software update that enables the camera to shoot video, for example.)
Re:How more limited can you get? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet it still dominates the market.
Someday the tech pundits will learn that ease of use trumps features.
In the UK, Vodafone.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Apple is understood to be demanding that its European mobile phone partners hand over a significant proportion of revenues generated by the iPhone and restrict the content that users can access."
So, the really interesting point about the device now becomes apparent. The business model has been so far, that you took service from whoever you wanted, using whatever phone you wanted, and you accessed whatever content you wanted. We are now seeing an attempt to get to a totally different model. To use a phone, you are obliged to sign up to a music download store, whether you are interested in music, or music from that store, or not. Then you are obliged to sign up to one and only one network. Finally, you can't access the content you want unless the phone supplier approves of it. And for all of this, you pay not only for the usage of the network, but you also end up paying a fee to the phone maker for the privilege of undergoing all these restrictions.
Now, people will write back and say, you don't have to buy it. No. And that is not the point at all. The point is not primarily about Apple or the iPhone. The point we should be paying attention to is, what happens and how will it feel, if this becomes the standard business model in the mobile internet and service arena?
I suggest not at all. As little, in fact, as if we were to be controlled in our use of our PCs by Microsoft. Buy only the hardware brands that Redmond tells you are permitted. Access only the sites that Redmond approves of. Load only the software that Redmond permits. Or Cupertino.
We must devoutly hope that this model turns into a huge business flop, not because we like or hate Apple, but because the model in itself is inimical to intellectual freedom. The present one, use what you like to do what you like, is infinitely preferable from the point of view of freedom of information and expression. Just as the present CD/DVD model is infinitely preferable to the iTunes model: buy what you want, by whatever browser or at whatever walkin store you want, pay by whatever credit card you want, take it home and play it on the player of your choice, made by whoever you choose to buy players from. This too will turn out to be about intellectual freedom, when it comes to buying ebooks and enews.
It is related to Apple and its values and strategy, in the sense that this has always been what Apple was about. But the important thing is not to be critical of Apple in itself. It is the model that is wrong. Of course, the company is very wrong too. But long as it stays below 5% of everything, who cares? Its when its model starts to dominate that we should become disturbed and enraged, or when it tries to extend its controlled and restrictive model to areas of intellectual life that are presently free.
Then we need to educate, and to resist.
Re:How more limited can you get? (Score:5, Insightful)
Off-the-shelf interoperability with your firm's servers AND push mail? Hmmmm.... could that be because your firm has a Blackberry server?
I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed with "off-the-shelf" interoperability with expensive server software from the same company. Give me plain old IMAP and POP3 support, which will give you off-the-shelf support with pretty much every e-mail server on the planet.
Re:I'm waiting for the iPhone Shuffle (Score:2, Insightful)
How is that unpredictable? I know the MD5 algorithm, and I can execute the GetTimeInMillis() call, and I know the range and rate of change. Thus, I can predict all possible output.
I hope you don't design cryptographic software.