Walmart Slaps Heavy Discount on iPhones, iPad

Smart business, or just one more sign that Apple iPhone shipments appear to be slowing down from their usual, fevered pace?

That's what pundits and reporters alike are discussing in regards to Walmart's latest announcement that it plans to sell Apple's iPhone 5 at a heavily discounted price – just in time for the holiday shopping season, we note.

According to a Facebook post on the official Walmart page, Apple's iPhone 5 is getting $62 shaved off its price so long as purchasers also sign up for a two-year contract at the time. That puts the 16-gigabyte iPhone 5 at a mere $127, or all of $72 less than what Apple charges customers that purchase an iPhone 5 from them directly.

And that's not all.

Walmart's also knocking a bit off the price of Apple's fifth-generation smartphone, the iPhone 4s. The company now plans to sell the smartphone for $47, a savings of roughly $43 from its previous price of $89.97. And some of Apple's tablets are joining in on the price-cutting fun as well: Walmart's cutting the cost of Apple's 16-gigabyte, third-generation iPad to $399, and those who purchase a tablet after Monday will also receive a $30 Walmart gift card.

There was a bit of initial confusion following Walmart's announcement about the iPad price drop, as the company's public relations agency was initially "correcting" the company's announcement and indicating that, in fact, Apple's fourth-generation iPad was on sale for the discounted price. The confusion has since been cleared up and, officially, Walmart's selling the third-generation iPad on sale – not Apple's latest iPad.

So, what's the difference?

Apple officially introduced its fourth-generation iPad at a late October press event, all of seven months after the company initially announced its third-generation iPad. The differences between the two devices include the fourth-generation iPad's support for global LTE connectivity, a new Lightning connector, and a brand-new A6X processor that, according to Apple, offers double the processing and graphical capabilities of the A5X chip used in the company's third-generation iPad.

And Apple's claims appear to stack up, according to :

"The results are stunning. The fourth-gen iPad outmatched all other Apple products on the Geekbench and GLBenchmark benchmarks, scoring 1,768 on Geekbench to the iPad 3's 749. Similarly, the heavy game 'Need for Speed: Most Wanted' launched in 18 seconds on the new iPad as compared to 37 seconds on the iPad 3. Yes, it's more than twice as fast. With the iPad 3, I found apps that stressed the older A5 processor. That just isn't the case any more."

Given that Apple has discontinued production on its third-generation iPad in favor of its latest model, Walmart's offer will surely allow the company to dump plenty of inventory as we head into the holiday season. As for whether the $100 discount for the third-generation iPad versus Apple's $499 asking price for its fourth-generation iPad is worth the cost in speed, we'll leave that for you to decide.

 

For more tech tidbits from David Murphy, follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).