Apple will enter the mid-range phone market in the next year and a half, a market analyst predicts, as it looks to head off the challenge from keenly priced Android smartphones.
According to Peter Misek of Jeffries, checks his company have conducted “increasingly point to a launch [of a low-cost iPhone] within the next 6-18 months”.
Misek claims that the handset, which tech types have provisionally dubbed the iPhone Nano, could sell for as little as $300 (not much shy of £200 ) while still allowing Apple to maintain a respectable profit margin.
Rumours that Apple would shed its ‘premium product at a premium price’ policy in favour of a more inclusive, mass market approach to smartphones have been rife for years.
However, they have gained fresh momentum in recent months, as Android has usurped Apple’s iOS operating system as the world’s largest smartphone platform as measured by shipments in the last quarter.
The unofficial ‘Nano’ sobriquet stems principally from the fact that the cheaper phone is expected to be a more compact bit of kit than earlier iPhone iterations. To keep costs down, Apple is rumoured to be planning to recycle components from earlier iPhones.