Apple’s senior VP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller threw Apple-watchers for a loop on Thursday by stating that cheap smartphones will “never be the future of Apple products.” Schiller made the comments to the Shanghai Evening News, noting that Apple’s goal is to use the best technology available in order “to provide the best product to the market.”
Rumours were rampant earlier this week about Apple potentially coming to market with a low-cost iPhone that could possibly compete with Google’s entry-level Android devices. Both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg‘s sources indicated that we’ll finally see Apple launch an iPhone around the $150 mark by the end of 2013. Unfortunately, as expected, this dream has been shot down by Phil Schiller.
[quote]According to a translation from The Next Web, Schiller said, “At first, non-smartphones were popular in the Chinese market, now cheap smartphones are more popular and non-smartphones are out … 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.”[/quote]
Despite these comments, one can simply look at Apple’s iPod lineup to see lower cost alternatives to the iPod touch that wouldn’t be considered cheap yet cost less and still use the best technology available.
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