iPhone 5C is anything but cheap...

Apple held a separate event to unveil its two smartphones for the Chinese audience. It has been assumed and I think correctly that Apple is trying to target developing markets like China, Asian countries and others with the introduction of iPhone 5C which is supposedly low-budget.

However, some Chinese analysts have claimed that this is not a low-budget smartphone as it was earlier claimed. It is expected that the new “low-budget” smartphone will cost £463 ($733/ about 115,000 naira).

iPhone 5C

This means that iPhone 5C will cost higher in China than the U.S. where the SIM-card free version will cost $549. This is due to the fact that operators subsidize the price of phones in the U.S. while China is a different matter. The way Chinese operators reduce the long term consumer cost is by making the monthly plans cheap.

“If you look at the price, it’s clearly a high-end phone, not a low- or even midrange phone,” Jenny Lai, an analyst at HSBC told New York Times.

“If they had been able to get down in the $350 to $400 range, we would have seen a big bump in the fourth quarter,” Francis Sideco, an analyst at a research firm, HIS said. “They’ll still get a bump, but this would have accelerated it.”

“By any standards, it’s a premium price,” he continued. “When you really look at it, they didn’t make a cheaper phone. They made a more expensive phone so that they could call the other one a cheaper phone.”

According to the sales statistics, Apple had a tough time selling its smartphones in China in the second quarter of 2013. Samsung led the smartphone sales while Chinese indigenous company Xiaomi came second.

With many Chinese companies like Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE, and newcomer Xiaomi, analytics company Canalys claims that Apple only had 5 percent of the smartphone market in China during the second quarter.

There are insinuations that Apple may still reduce the price of the iPhone 5C to make its effort to lower the price obvious. There are also thoughts that Apple in its agreement with Chinese telecoms companies could force the price down.

Via New York Times

Posted in Apple, Smartphones