Phil Schiller has told a Chinese newspaper that Apple will not make budget smartphones a focus.
Speaking to Shanghai Evening News (and translated by The Next Web), Apple's SVP of worldwide marketing spoke relatively candidly about the rumours the brand is set to unveil a handset with a more affordable price point to satisfy new markets.
"Despite the popularity of cheap smartphones, this will never be the future of Apple's products. In fact, although Apple's market share of smartphones is just about 20%, we own the 75% of the profit," said Schiller.
He also pointed to the fact China was transitioning from featurephones to cheaper smartphones; presumably it was inferred that the country would eventually embrace the higher end of the market, thus bringing in maximum profit revenue.
Better than best
Schiller also highlighted the manufacturing practices employed by Apple: namely the efforts to always use the best technology available, such as the Retina display, the chassis materials and the production processes all make a 'superior' product.
He also noted that market share is less important to the firm than profits, stating that although Apple only had 20% users (in the smartphone space) it nabbed 75% of the cash from those sales, contrasting with the strategies of some brands.
Whether Apple will find a way to wriggle around this statement in the future is going to be up for much debate – after all, the iPad mini seemed to both contradict and confirm Steve Jobs' statement about a seven-inch tablet being too small, so what chance a cheaper, but not too cheap, iPhone appearing any time soon?
Source : techradar[dot]com
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