Apple, a brand name which is asynchronous with the word premium has released a cheaper iPhone on September 12th of 2018! This is not happening for the first time and it has been mixed back when Apple has tried to release cheaper iPhones. Up until the Steve Jobs era, that is till 2012, Apple had held up the premium tag releasing one device a year pushing the limits of what a smartphone could do. Later, Apple tried to shift gears and target the people who can’t afford the premium price tage! Enter the iPhone 5C, the first cheaper iPhone released along with their flagship model the iPhone 5s in 2013. This phone basically had the exact specifications as the previous model, the iPhone 5, and had a less durable plastic back which felt more of a downgrade than an upgrade. It anyway was a win for Apple as they made tons of money through the 5C because if they had continued their old practice of reducing the price of their previous model during the release of their current model it would have resulted in lesser profits.Rather than reducing the price of the iPhone 5 by $100 or so, they stopped the sales of the iPhone 5 and released iPhone 5c. So same old wine in now a cheaper bottle for the same cost. Clever huh? Well not exactly! The sales of iPhone 5C didn’t go as expected and even when they sold 24 million units it was declared as a failure. Well, at least by Apple standards! One major contributing reason for the reduced sales of iPhone 5C was the direct competition with their own flagship the iPhone 5s. So why wouldn’t one go and buy the iPhone 5s for a mere $100 more? Fast forward to 2016 Apple again tried the same strategy but this time in a much more clever way. The iPhone SE was released six months after the release of their flagship life on 6S and 6S plus and the iPhone 5S was discontinued.The SE had the latest processor higher storage capacity and was spec wise on par with their flagship model the 6S and 6S plus with the body of the 5S. This phone was priced around $150 less than their current flagship and was pretty compelling for anyone who loved iPhone 5S’s design. Although Apple has not disclosed the total number of iPhone SC sold, it is widely regarded as a success.In 2018, they have again opted for releasing a cheaper model and the reason can be many. The success of the iPhone X would mean that there are people who love its design. For them, rather than reducing the cost of the iPhone X and continuing its sales, they release a new model with cheaper materials and a slight reduction in cost which would mean that Apple as a company would earn a lot more money . The fact that Huawei has replaced Apple as the second largest phone manufacturer would be alarming for Apple to compete in more sections of a market. Apple could penetrate a little bit more in the price sensitive but huge markets like India and China with the cheaper model. Now, is the cheaper model worth it? When Apple released iPhone 5C, oneplus wasn’t a thing yet, Huawei wasn’t releasing such good budget phones and overall and Android itself was somewhat inferior to iOS. So the idea of releasing the cheaper iOS device itself was intriguing. When Apple released the iPhone SE every phone manufacturer was racing behind 5 inch and 5.5 inch phone and iPhone SE was a four inch phone so it was pretty appealing for compact for lovers.But today, I don’t see a point for a cheapermodel to exist. It is a generic looking device with still a hefty price tag. Maybe the only reason to think about the cheaper model would be the iOS software but even that isn’t intriguing enough and everyone will be looking to buy the flagship. To answer the question whether it would be a success, well as long as it has got the name iPhone and the bitten apple fruit branding at the back there will always be people who’ll buy even a brick!.
