Tim Cook: iPhone 5c Wasn't Meant to Be an Entry-Level Phone
During its financial conference call today, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a new perspective on the company's iPhone strategy.
Cook was asked questions about how Apple plans to address lower price segments of the smartphone market and where the iPhone 5c stands in the lineup. He stated that the iPhone 4s is now the entry-level iPhone contrary to the pre-launch belief that the iPhone 5c would be the entry-level device:
If you look at what we've done, we're selling the iPhone 4s as our entry offer. We sell the iPhone 5c as the mid-tier and the 5s. Our goal is to have growth across the iPhone but we want each of those categories to grow as compared to what we were doing previously. If you look at the total that we're making in the low end and mid tier and high end, the sum there, we'd like to grow in each one of those. We're really please that we did that.
Cook also elaborated the philosophy of seeing the iPhone 4s as the entry level iPhone after discussing foreign device pricing strategy and why the company did not keep the iPhone 4 in its lineup given its sales success:
What we did with our lineup this time was the 4s is replacing the 4. If you look at the US as an example, the 4s is now free. The 4 was free previously. When you translate that out of the US, it depends on the market as to what specifically happens. Currency changes and the strength of the dollar doesn't always play in our favor in some geos.
We see the 4s as our entry iPhone offer that gives somebody the ability to access the entire ecosystem as a fantastic product. We understand that there is elasticity in that market and it will move accordingly.
Apple sold a record 150 million iPhones in fiscal 2013, up 25 million units from 2012. The company has sold 421.3 million smartphones since the iPhone's launch in 2007.
Popular Stories
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
There are widespread reports of Apple users being locked out of their Apple ID overnight for no apparent reason, requiring a password reset before they can log in again. Users say the sudden inexplicable Apple ID sign-out is occurring across multiple devices. When they attempt to sign in again they are locked out of their account and asked to reset their password in order to regain access. ...
Apple used to regularly increase the base memory of its Macs up until 2011, the same year Tim Cook was appointed CEO, charts posted on Mastodon by David Schaub show. Earlier this year, Schaub generated two charts: One showing the base memory capacities of Apple's all-in-one Macs from 1984 onwards, and a second depicting Apple's consumer laptop base RAM from 1999 onwards. Both charts were...
On this week's episode of The MacRumors Show, we discuss the announcement of Apple's upcoming "Let loose" event, where the company is widely expected to announce new iPad models and accessories. Subscribe to The MacRumors Show YouTube channel for more videos Apple's event invite shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Apple CEO Tim...
In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman outlined some of the new products he expects Apple to announce at its "Let Loose" event on May 7. First, Gurman now believes there is a "strong possibility" that the upcoming iPad Pro models will be equipped with Apple's next-generation M4 chip, rather than the M3 chip that debuted in the MacBook Pro and iMac six months ago. He said a ...
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Top Rated Comments
For consumers, I believe it's best that the jump to both 64bit architecture and lighting connectors be completed. After that, we can go back to this model of selling 2 year old products.
Yeah, free. :rolleyes:
Sure Timmy.
Not all consumers want to lock themselves into onerous 2-year contracts.