{"id":1096,"date":"2013-08-23T12:39:01","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T02:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/?p=1096"},"modified":"2013-08-27T20:18:49","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T10:18:49","slug":"adding-to-yesterdays-iphone-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/features\/adding-to-yesterdays-iphone-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Adding to yesterday&#8217;s iPhone analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since posting yesterday, I&#8217;ve had some great feedback &amp; comments refining my proposed projections for Apple&#8217;s new iPhones. So I wanted to take the time today to break some of those down and refine my ideas further.<\/p>\n<p>Reader <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tomizaks\/status\/370486351382069249\" target=\"_blank\">Tom Izaks<\/a> pointed to news earlier in Feburary of Qualcomm (Apple&#8217;s cellular chipset maker) <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2013\/02\/qualcomms-global-lte-chip-could-help-end-iphone-fragmentation\/\" target=\"_blank\">working on a yet-unreleased &#8216;global LTE chip&#8217;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Qualcomm said OEM products (that is, smartphones) containing its new chipset will launch in the second half of this year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/appleinsider.com\/articles\/13\/02\/22\/new-qualcomm-lte-solution-could-be-used-in-true-global-iphone-with-support-for-china-mobile\" target=\"_blank\">Apple Insider<\/a> also had news on the technical specs of this purported chipset:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The RF360 chipset is &#8220;designed to mitigate this problem while improving RF performance,&#8221; and offers support for all seven cellular modes, including LTE-FDD, LTE-TDD, WCDMA, EV-DO, CDMA 1x, TD-SCDMA and GSM\/EDGE.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This would definitely make sense to be incorporated into a next-gen iPhone, given this chipset would also support China Mobile&#8217;s TD-SCDMA network, one of the biggest growth markets for Apple.<\/p>\n<p>This would dramatically simplify their lineup, cutting the number of variations to 1\/3 of what it was before. It would also eliminate the possibility of a 3G-only iPhone 5C. I think this is entirely feasible.<\/p>\n<p>Second, some readers suggested a 128GB iPhone 5S may be possibility. I find it hard to fathom, given the push to cloud-enabled services &amp; streaming, but I can&#8217;t rule it out. I can&#8217;t see Apple doing 4 different levels of storage, so a 128GB iPhone would also naturally eliminate the baseline version at 16GB. That&#8217;s a tough call to make.<\/p>\n<p>Based on this info, let&#8217;s re-examine my original predictions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>iPhone 5S, 3 colours, 16GB\/32GB\/64GB<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>iPhone 5, 2 colours, 16GB<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>iPhone 5C LTE, 5 colours, 16GB only<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>iPhone 5C, 5 colours, 8GB only<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I would eliminate the baseline 5C model for sure. This now leaves us with a conundrum; why would Apple introduce a 5C with similar specs and storage to the 5? If the two are almost identical except for the casing (and perhaps, a slightly better camera), what purpose does the iPhone 5 now serve?<\/p>\n<p>So, following that line of logic, I think that it&#8217;s likely the iPhone 5 will disappear entirely. This leaves us with a dramatically reduced lineup. So dramatic in fact, that there&#8217;s ample space to stock the iPhone 5C with another storage option.<\/p>\n<p>So, if we add a 32GB version to the 5C, I think we ought to bump the ceiling of the iPhone 5S storage to 128GB; it makes sense to only have 1 storage point at which the two products overlap.<\/p>\n<p>My new prediction:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>iPhone 5S: LTE, 3 colours, 32GB\/64GB\/128GB<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>iPhone 5C: LTE, 5 colours, 16GB\/32GB<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If my maths is right, this now means only 19 variants \u2014 far less than before! If they&#8217;re overhauling the market with an entirely different approach to selling iPhones, a simplified lineup certainly feels like an Apple-like way to go about it.<\/p>\n<p>Creating a lineup like this would have the familiar smooth price-point ramp that&#8217;s a hallmark of Apple products. In fact, I bet there would be a relatively small price difference between a 32GB iPhone 5C and a base model iPhone 5S.<\/p>\n<p>To me, this now feels very reminiscent of the lineup that emerged from the iPod when the iPod mini was introduced. It&#8217;s an interesting parallel, and one that seems to keep repeating itself when Apple diversifies a product line.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, I would not be surprised if we see the same strategy when the next iPad event happens in October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since posting yesterday, I&#8217;ve had some great feedback &#038; comments refining my proposed projections for Apple&#8217;s new iPhones. So I wanted to take the time today to break some of those down and refine my ideas further.\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"reckoner_social_message":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}