The iPhone 5 release date will include an iPhone 4S sidekick, as pointed to by comments as high profile as Apple board member Al Gore bragging about the “new iPhones” and as analytical as Sprint’s CFO musing on low iPhone margins. The burning question in the minds of would-be buyers is why Apple is set embark on this two-pronged strategy. The answer is that it’s nothing new. Going back a few generations, Apple has opted to keep its flagship iPhone model at two hundred dollars and up, and has split the pricing difference with bargain hunters by offering last year’s iPhone model for a variable amount under a hundred dollars. This allows Apple to build the new iPhone the way it wants, without having to skimp on components or sell it at a a loss, while keeping its overall iPhone pricing structure competitive with that of other smartphone platforms. In another year, Apple would be gearing up to release the iPhone 5 with the existing iPhone 4 sticking around for another year and filling that bargain role. But this isn’t another year. From reasons ranging from the bifurcation of the iPhone 4 across the Verizon-AT&T landscape, to the arrival of Sprint on that landscape, to inventory and competitive issues, Apple is updating its iPhone 4 for its new bargain role and tagging it as the iPhone 4S in the process…
In actuality, there’s no guarantee that “iPhone 4S” will be the brand name. In fact that moniker was invented by the press earlier this year. One analyst thinks it’ll be called “iPhone 4-plus” as some kind of play on the popularity of the +1 button or some such. But regardless of what Apple calls the new-ish old-ish forthcoming iPhone, it’ll take its place alongside the entirely new iPhone 5 on its release date for multiple reasons. The most glaring is that there are currently two entire iPhone 4 families, one which is hardware compatible with AT&T and the other with Verizon. Throw in the presumed arrival of Sprint into the mix, and that carrier would need a third iPhone 4 which could talk to its network (alternatively, Sprint would get the iPhone 5 but be stuck without a low-end iPhone model to offer its customers for the first year). For reasons of inventory and simplicity, Apple prefers to have a single bargain-bin model. Moving to a revised “4S” model which can talk to all three networks (expect T-Mobile compatibility to be included for good measure, so that deal can go forward once the merger situation is resolved), Apple simplifies everything. But there’s more to it than that…
In this increasingly competitive smartphone landscape, Apple will be trying to sell the iPhone 4 for the same discount price as bargain-bin Android phones. But because Apple has fewer individual iPhone models and the iPhone 4 is well known to be a product that’s a year-plus old, it faces a perceptual disadvantage in that buyers may not be aware that the competing bargain-basement Android phone model in the fifty dollar price range are just as outdated. By replacing it with an iPhone 4S, Apple arms itself with a somewhat new iPhone model on the low end. Marketing equals perception, and this change in nomenclature alone will go a long way. Of course savvier customers would see through the 4S if it were merely the iPhone 4 with an extra letter on its name, so the 4S also allows Apple to update the feature set just enough to keep it current without treading on high-end features which make the iPhone 5 more desirable. The hardware revamp also allows Apple to add key new features such as 4G LTE networking (which appears to be a go after all) and an A5 processor which is necessary to power the unannounced “Assistant” feature of iOS 5 to the budget-iPhone via hardware revamp; the iPhone 4 is hardware-capable of neither of these features in its current incarnation.
Add in the fact that plenty of buyers are still under the false impression that the “iPhone 4 antenna issue” was something more than a mean spirited hoax, and Apple gets to put to bed one of the greatest faux-controversies of the past decade simply by retiring the “iPhone 4″ name. Sure, the same spurned tech journalists will claim that the iPhone 4S (and for that matter the iPhone 5) have the “antenna defect” or some other supposed issue they’ve concocted. But as their failed attempt at creating an “iPhone 4 scratching controversy” revealed, such claims are running out of gas. Apple can bury the original faux-controversy, which is still hurting it in the sales department, simply by staging a two-pronged release date for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S and officially ending the iPhone 4 era.
Article source: www.beatweek.com
Tags: iphone 4g lte, iphone 4s, iPhone 5, iphone 5 release date