Rumours surrounding the iPad Mini preceded its actual existence by years and the same can be said for the possibility of a cheaper iPhone too, but the latter could become a reality with talk of a more affordable device possibly touching down at the end of 2013.
We’re only just out of the first week of the new year and the iPhone rumours have already started to flow, naturally. Based on a mix of rumblings from the likes of Digitimes, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, Apple may be considering a more affordable handset, scheduled to arrive at the end of the year, if not this time next year. The new iPhone would be designed with a different market segment in mind, one that Apple hasn’t previously catered too.
The new budget iPhone would lose elements of the existing device such as its aluminium body, in favour of a predominantly plastic design as a means to save on manufacturing costs, but at the same time, could play host to a larger display to better compete with the leading rivals, who for the meantime appear to follow the ‘bigger is better’ design brief. Rumours of such a device have been stoked by Apple’s successes in emerging markets such as China; a huge, previously untapped gold mine for the American tech giant, whilst costs for the new handset would sit between $99 and $149 dollars, compared to the base $199 it costs in the US for the current iPhone.
With companies like Samsung having already knocked Apple’s off of the top sales spot at the end of last year, it’d make sense to think that the company are hard at work cooking up new ways to pull in revenue in order to fight back and creating a more affordable version of one of the most successful consumer products of all time doesn’t seem like a bad way to do it.
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