“Apple will never ship a lower cost iPhone.” Is this song sung true, reflecting a universal law carved in rocks that CEO Tim Cook carried down from Yosemite mountain? Is there any reason the song can’t change?
Apple Watch will change this game
Apple Watch is all the excuse Apple’s going to need to justify strategic pricing reductions across its iPhone range. You see, when the device ships it will only work with iPhone models 5 and later – sure, that’s a lot of phones, but it’s not for everyone.
To ensure its watch gets prime time, how might Apple expand the market?
Sure, it could make the device compatible with older iPhone, tablet and iPod touch models, or it could introduce a new lower cost iPhone. I imagine an improved version of the iPhone 5S.
I imagine that a lower price device in combination with the all new Apple Watch may be the only excuse people need to slap down some plastic for the iPhone they’ve waited so, so long to abandon their unloved Android device to obtain.
Think different
Think about the way Apple works. Sure, right now a huge chunk of company profits comes from the iPhone, but this cannot last forever -- Cupertino’s change agent business model demands constant change. Diversification makes sense and their ain’t no sacred cows in this business plan. Change is good.
Think about how technology is changing. Just as it migrated from the mainframe to the PC to the iPhone, connected intelligence is going to migrate from smartphones into the cloud and families of intelligent devices, our car, our home, our city and our clothes.
Devices will disappear into the background.
Think about Apple’s operating systems and the way these are becoming increasingly ambient. Think about user interface developments being worked on right now, like voice, like gesture, like the mind-controlled Mac SpeechTrans will talk about more this year.
Devices will become invisible
Think about those things and you’ll see that the smartphone is receding in importance. Mobile devices haven’t quite become “trucks,” but it seems inevitable they will eventually, with their roles (where logical) replaced by these emerging models of connected machine intelligence.