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Apple made a lot of compromises in designing the 5C to make it cheaper, but they completely failed to make it cheap! It's still more than two and a half times
by beloch 13y ago
Apple made a lot of compromises in designing the 5C to make it cheaper, but they completely failed to make it cheap! It's still more than two and a half times the price of a Nexus 4 unlocked. Unlocked sales for the 5C will be pitiful. Under a multi-year contract the 5C isn't substantially cheaper than the 5S, so people who want the best phone will shun it. The iPhone 5C is going to fail utterly in the market segment it's designed for.
However, I do see a couple of possible markets where the 5C may succeed. There's the Hello Kitty "anything in pastels is squeeeeee" crowd. This market includes little girls, people buying phones for little girls, and Josh Kerr apparently. IF the 5C proves more durable than the 5S it might also capture the tough-wear crowd that wants a phone that doesn't have to be hidden inside a giant blob of silicone to survive a 6" fall onto concrete. Let's face it, not many people are going to want the cases Apple is trying to sell for the 5C. I'm just speculating about the 5C's durability though. Plastic phones might not feel as nice in the hand, but if they use high quality plastic and are well built they do tend to survive better than phones made entirely out of metal and glass.
Will it sell? Never underestimate the Hello Kitty crowd!
- adventured 13y agoApple's primary value is in its brand + premium products. If their 5C is aimed at the hello kitty crowd, their iPhone brand will be demolished as a premium must-have phone. The 5C will take down the rest of the iPhone brand. The only thing worse than having 5% of the smart phone market in the future, would be having a terrible brand that only owns the hello kitty crowd. Kiss those hyper margins goodbye and nothing could be less cool than the hello kitty crowd (cool being a critical element of what Apple depends upon to sell very expensive consumer electronics).
- cmelbye 13y agoI'm curious, what compromises did they make? The only compromise I can think of is the plastic shell, which I think will actually attract a lot more people with the bright colors vs. silver/black.
- reginaldjcooper 13y agoI wish you could have written this without the ad hom implication that men who like certain colors are necessarily both effeminate and puerile. If Josh Kerr fucking loves pastels that doesn't make him any less of a man.