iPhone 5c

[pavlov]

There's a feeling of déjà vu about this product approach. Take yesteryear's technology, repackage it in a safe design that follows trends established by others, sell for a price that is more than twice what the competitors charge because, hey, you're Apple and your customers will happily pay for your increasing margins.

At least this time around, the MBAs didn't get to name it "iPhone Performa 551c".

[aespinoza]

You know, you are right. It is sad to see that Apple has no new ideas. I wonder if they will ever do something innovative again ?

I also wonder if Steve Jobs would ever put a fingerprint scanner in an iPhone, make a "Gold" iPhone or keep the same hardware design for 3 consecutive iphones.

[Tloewald]

Certainly your comment evokes deja vu -- same old criticism of Apple that is based on tired old characterizations from 15 years ago. I don't think there are any competitive phones available for half the price (there are certainly inferior phones available for half the price).

I do think it's priced a bit high. I'm surprised it's not $50-100 cheaper. Maybe they have iPhone 4S inventory to get rid of (I don't understand why they're keeping an old phone with obsolete cables and screen format around otherwise).

[hanifvirani]

Nokia tweeted this: https://twitter.com/nokia_uk/status/377483408043036672

[astral303]

Nokia is full of it here, it's not like Apple has never released multicolored versions of their products before:

http://cdn.cnet.com.au/story_media/339291893/apple_ipod_2008... http://images.apple.com/ipod-shuffle/images/hero1.jpg http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/iPod_tou...

[kennywinker]

Huh, that image looks familiar.... Apple, 1999: http://i.imgur.com/McRhNgK.jpg

[ctdonath]

Nokia's bragging point is that Apple caught up to them on...color? Hey, how's the processing power on those industry-leading colorful devices? and the biometric security?

[blairbeckwith]

I really don't get the external case design. Seeing just a couple letters of "iPhone" through the holes in the case looks incredibly bad.

[molf]

Yeah, wow, it's pretty bad. Here's a picture from the Apple store: http://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/3559/as-images.apple....

[gfodor]

Since Jobs died there have been countless stupid things people have pointed to as evidence that Apple has changed since then. This is the first one I actually buy, this is the exact type of thing Jobs would have flipped the fuck out about.

[Samuel_Michon]

Wow yeah, that is very unlike Apple. Especially if you choose the same color case as your iPhone, the black letters really stand out. With case, it looks like ‘non’.

[DanitaBaires]

I was thinking exactly that. I don't think Jobs with his extreme perfectionism would've let this come out to the market. It's so "un-Apple".

[antr]

Time will tell, but for the sake of argument: at c. $550 for the unsubsidised version this is a very high price point for the "iPhone for emerging markets" argument. I'm just very curious to see the market expansion with this "lower" tier model.

[wmf]

This is an example of how rumors can be bad when they don't come true. It was rumored that the 5C would be much cheaper for emerging markets, but clearly that's not Apple's strategy (at least not yet).

[roc]

I never understood the expectation for the 5C to be introduced so cheaply.

Apple's M.O. has been good/better/best, with increasingly older models making up the cheaper slots. Without a 5C, everyone would have expected 5S/5/4S. So with a 5C in the 'good' slot, that would imply 5S/5/5C -- but who would buy a 5 for $100 more, if it's barely distinguishable from the 5C?

And they couldn't have stripped a 5C down much further to build more separation -- at its core a 5 needs the internals it has to drive its display with the performance and battery life Apple aims for and advertises.

So as soon as we saw the screen dimensions and assumed 5C (vs 4SC), people really ought to have expected 5S/5C/4S.

Further, Apple's finally landed a few highly-sought-after carriers in the East, which will bring a ton of sales all by itself. So why would anyone expect them to take a margin hit pitching a more attractive $450 model (and at the expense of having any clear $550 offering) when they haven't soaked the early adopters yet?

Next year, the 5C will flow down naturally to the 'good' slot: 6/5S/5C. And its construction likely allows Apple to shoot even lower than the 4Ss $450 slot. That's when I'd expect to see Apple make a price play.

Perhaps even sliding everything down the scale a little, to make room for the rumored larger-screen iPhone at the new premium price point.

In any event, it will be interesting to see how they move forward from that. 6/5S/5C -> 6S/6/... 5SC?

Would the larger-screen variant flow down the way the larger screen of the 5 is simply becoming 'standard'? Or would it remain an essentially separate product that simply got refreshed at its existing price point and didn't have a deep bench of older models, ala iPod Touch?

[badman_ting]

This is meant to be the mid-tier phone, not the cheap phone

[cliveowen]

I think this lineup may backfire. People with a 4S wanting to upgrade will probably opt for the coloured, cheaper version. People who previously wouldn't have bought the iPhone because too expensive (mostly in Europe where subsidized planes aren't always available) won't buy it now anyway because the 5c is in the same ballpark of the 5s.

They have basically introduced a cheaper alternative to old customers.

[Le_SDT]

Apple breaking the scroll bar themselve? Could the site instead gives a real scroll bar experience on desktop and give this "tablet-style" scrolling experience to tablets/phones only?

[eCa]

I can only scroll down once, to design. Guess someone forgot to test things.

Win7/FF23

[themstheones]

Not sure what browser you are using, but Apple apparently doesn't test their site on firefox. It's not the first time I've noticed something broken on their site. Seems pretty lazy when the browser has a 20-30% market share.

[Timothee]

Not only do they take over the scrolling and usual keyboard-based navigation, they messed up Shift+Space and it works like Space.

[glesica]

Turn off JavaScript and you can scroll with the arrows/page keys... but yeah, annoying.

[w1ntermute]

Nope, it's fucked up in both cases.

[markbao]

At the unlocked price of $550 for the iPhone 5c and $650 for the considerably-better iPhone 5s, it doesn't seem like there's a huge price gap here. I have doubts whether it'll sell that well as the mid-level smartphone. The 4s is $450, which is closer to the price point I would have expected.

[Pxtl]

It's basically for the American market. The after-provider-subsidy price difference will appear humongous, and consumers aren't rational about provider subsidies.

[r00fus]

Maybe it allows Apple to play both sides of the whole male/female marketing angle - the 5C is safe to be a bit more "feminine" while the 5S is angular and masculine.

[georgemcbay]

The price gap is in a way even worse subsidized because it is still just a $100 discount up front but the same price per month for the same contract length for a lesser phone.

The 5C doesn't make much sense to me beyond people that really want more choice in the color of their phone.

[saturdaysaint]

Ultimately, this is barely a tweak of their old strategy. This is last year's model, a little bit cheaper. Except now Apple has cheapened the cost while upgrading the battery and front facing camera.

Mostly I see this targeting precisely the US customers that would buy the old iPhone in years past - people that aren't interested in the latest and greatest features very well might be induced to upgrade by a fun color that stands out from their friends's iPhones.

[gfodor]

Before people write off the price point lets wait and see what Apple is announcing tomorrow in China. I could imagine that the unlocked price is a red herring and most buyers will be getting it cheap with contracts on China Mobile.

[mullingitover]

It's cheaper to buy the 5S off contract at $650 and take it to Straight Talk ($45 a month AYCE data/minutes) than to buy the 5C and pay $100 a month at AT&T for two years.

[baddox]

It looks surprisingly good. One could even argue it looks as good or better than the metal iPhone 5's.

I am disappointed that the 5C isn't the free (subsidized) version though. The iPhone 4S is sticking around for that.

[rodedwards]

4S is probably not long for this world. Right now, its filling a gap both in the product shelf (free) and in an amortization-of-development-costs schedule somewhere. Plus, it allows for some extra profit taking from the 5C for the moment as people eschew the 4S.

I'll bet as 5C production ramps, the 4S goes away in X months. Its in Apple's long term best interests to get everyone on the same screen anyway...

[crystaln]

Lots of people complaining about the lack of innovation. What exactly were you expecting?

A fingerprint sensor, which will almost certainly replace passwords on every application once the API is exposed seems pretty innovative.

A chip dedicated to tracking movement for health / fitbit apps seems innovative.

A dual flash and other camera improvements is solid.

Smartphones are maturing. We might expect a holographic displays, non-touch 3d manipulation, tactile feedback, amorphous shapes, projectors, etc. in future versions. However the technology and battery life are not there yet.

Apple is somewhat behind in OS usability - particularly around notifications and inter-app communication.

Everyone wants to be wowed, and is bitching and moaning about the lack of innovation - yet has no ideas or suggestions for what Apple could do.

Personally I don't want much more out of my iPhone other than solidifying the hardware and interface improvements.

[AlexanderDhoore]

I'm very disappointed with the price. 599 euros. Holy F. That's a lot of money. Wasn't it supposed to be cheaper?

I guess it makes sense, profit margin-wise. But I was really hoping for a ~400 euro iPhone. That would have been something man... Instant panic at Samsung/Google/Microsoft. Too bad.

[Samuel_Michon]

Apple already sells a Euro 400 iPhone. Right now it’s the iPhone 4, later this month it will be the iPhone 4S.

I doubt Apple will want to compete in the bottom of the market as there are too many phone manufacturers that are willing to sell phones at a loss.

[gwright]

> Wasn't it supposed to be cheaper?

According to who? I find never-ending post-launch criticism of Apple products that fail to live up to random Internet rumors tiresome.

[_random_]

I am confused, is it iPhone 620 or Lumia 5c?

[therandomguy]

A $549 phone for developing markets. Seems like Apple is giving up on those markets.

[dataminer]

Lots of disappointment on iphone 5c pricing, here is my theory.

I think iphone 5c was never intended to match prices of android phones, it was created to allow Apple to expand its market share in Chinese market. From what is suggested in media, one of the reason Apple had a hard time getting China Mobile on board, was the high cost of subsidizing flag ship iphones. By creating a mid tier phone Apple may have been able to convince China Mobile to carry iphone.

Tim Cook has been very bullish about Chinese market, and this move may turn out very well.

[kmfrk]

This idea is also supported by the livestreams available to an Asian audience.

[mcormier]

iPhone? Sorry I was a little distracted with the interesting HTML scrolling design for the page. It's very novel.

[josteink]

Mashable's take on the iPhone 5C:

http://mashable.com/2013/09/10/things-iphone-5c-looks-like/?...

[ranman]

Looking at both the 5s and the 5c they definitely have some cool features but I don't know if it's really enough to prompt me to change from a regular 5.

The fingerprint sensor seems like a very nice touch but I still don't see any NFC features (I guess apple isn't betting on this tech) which I love with the android phones. No wireless charging.

I just really don't see a killer feature in this phone that makes me want to upgrade. Am I missing something?

[therandomguy]

They don't want you to upgrade. They know you will when 6 comes along. This is for people on "s" cycle.

[ScottWhigham]

I don't think that you are in the target market. Apple is more on a two-year cycle than a one-year cycle. Those who switch year-to-year are pretty rare, I think.

[Pxtl]

So, I assume the new iPod will be modeled after the 5c? Pushing the iPod 5 price up to $300 seemed like a bad move, hopefully the 5c-based iPod will get that price back down again.

Then again, the phoneless-smartphone (pocket tablets? Media/app players?) market seems to have been eaten by tablets and cheaper smartphones, in spite of its popularity with the kids.

[ulfw]

Johnny Ive: "It's quite remarkable when something feels familiar and yet is new at the same time."

[_random_]

He obviously meant Lumia 620 :)

http://www.nokia.com/gb-en/phones/phone/lumia620/