Regardless of a flood of gossip, Apple will not be designing a cheaper iPhone, at least not in the near future, according to Phil Schiller, the senior vice president of Apple’s worldwide marketing.
Schiller has reportedly said to Shanghai Evening News, the Chinese-language daily that "regardless of the high popularity of low priced smartphones, it would never become the future of Apple products". He also stated that, although the market share of Apple smartphones is about 20%, they possess about 75% of the turnover.
Gene Munster, an analyst of Piper Jaffray, has estimated that Apple would be able to rake in more than $6.5 billion per year with a low priced iPhone. And as Apple is apparently not interested in a bargain handset, those $6.5 billion dollars will be left on the desk for now.
Or is it? As some tech junkies note, the statement of Schiller only appears to be related to the class and quality of build and components of the future iPhones—and not essentially to their prices. As the Apple fan boys know, sponsored iPhones that are vended via different network carriers could always be bought with sharp discount rates contrast to what someone would have to spend on an unlocked iPhone.
So a low priced iPhone could still be a possibility.
