Schiller responds to "cheap iPhone" rumors
Matthew Panzarino:
“At first, non-smartphones were popular in the Chinese market, now cheap smartphones are more popular and non-smartphones are out,” Schiller added later. “Despite the popularity of cheap smartphones, this will never be the future of Apple’s products. In fact, although Apple’s market share of smartphones is just about 20%, we own the 75% of the profit.”
Panzarino continues:
Apple will need to make adjustments to its product development process and its marketing strategy in order to make serious inroads in the developing smartphone markets, but how it will do so is an interesting question. The continuous effort to leverage its economies of scale to produce parts that are at the top of the quality chain, but to do so at increasingly lower prices, is where I would look if I was a betting man.
John Gruber comes to a similar conclusion. It’s never been a matter of whether or not they want to make a cheap iPhone, iPad, or any computing device for that matter.