Buying an iPhone is a major financial decision for most people that pine for Apple’s pricey products, but according to CEO Tim Cook, the iPhone could soon see a price cuts in certain markets.
During his heavily publicized tour of India, Tim Cook sat down for an interview with Vikram Chandra on NDTV to talk about Apple’s interest in the country. When asked about whether the iPhone is too expensive, especially considering some features don’t work in countries outside the U.S., Cook actually acknowledged the price is a bit steep.
“Our profitability in India is materially less, but still I recognize the prices are high,” said Cook. “We want to do things that lower that over time to the degree that we can, so we’re looking into a number of things.”
Cook explained that duties and taxes compound to make the imported iPhone price higher than in the U.S. It’s unlikely that Apple will make the iPhone cheaper in its home country, but the CEO’s remarks are encouraging for Apple fans in developing nations that want an iPhone yet can’t afford one.
Even though iPhones may get cheaper, Tim Cook insisted that Apple’s “quality bar” will never be lowered. Because the company wants to make great products, Cook says they simply won’t be able to compete at lower price bands.
“We’re about making the best. That means we’re not going to play in some of these other price points. We would never make a product that we’re not proud of,” claimed Cook. “I don’t want to be in those markets, I don’t have a desire to be in those.”
Basically, Tim has no desire to make great phones for poor people. Instead he would prefer that everyone in India be able to buy an iPhone at a U.S. price, but he’ll probably have to wait many years until that time arrives.
You can watch the full interview below. The discussion of cheaper iPhones comes in around the 14 minute mark:
via: BI
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
12 responses to “Tim Cook admits iPhone is too damn expensive”
End of the sentence in the 4th paragraph should be.. “can’t afford one”?
“Basically, Tim has no desire to make great phones for poor people.” As if he knows a good way to do this and is just choosing not to? Come on. If Apple showed the industry how to make the best cheap phone, the industry would make even cheaper knockoffs of it, and it would be a race to the bottom.
Exactly! “we only want to make phones we’re proud of” means we only want to sell to the super rich in these countries, and keep making that tasty profit. Getting good phones into the hands of hundreds of millions of people struggling in developing countries would indeed be something to be proud of in my book. Wish he’d just be honest!
No, it doesn’t mean that. Most of the poor people can’t even afford a cell phone service. They are dirt poor. It all depends on what the term POOR and RICH means. To someone that has no money, someone with $1000 is super rich. But to someone that makes $100K a year, that’s poor. It all depends on what the meanings of the words poor, rich, etc. The average person that makes $50K a year can afford an iPhone. They may not have the top end model. $50K a year isn’t super rich. Even in India, $50K a year isn’t super rich. The wealthiest person in India is worth $18,9 Billion. That’s SUPER RICH. But there are plenty of others in India that make a respectable living can afford iPhones.
The poor people are making $2.50 or less, that’s the extreme poverty. That’s about 1/2 of the world’s population, they don’t need a smartphone, they need shelter, food and clothing, A smartphone for them is completely useless.
Samsung has that handed, even though they are not as good as iPhones they are better than some of the crap out there.
If the stock wasn’t tanking, he’d be talking about how the phone is a great value at its price.
That’s why Android One is overtaking developing markets, providing connectivity and apps to tons of people in regions like India.
Apple doesn’t need to make cheap phones. They need to make IOS and MAC OS X open source.
Now that would be cool. We could by an android or windows phone and put IOS on it and let the iPhones for the “super rich”. This way Apple could continue to make a lot of money and the rest of us extremely happy.
I wouldn’t mind going back to the days, that IOS and OS X were paid.
As someone who lives in a developing third world country, I can honestly say the biggest pain is that we have to pay full price plus duties for an iPhone, even though almost a third of the features (albeit software) is not available here. That’s a really bitter pill to swallow, but Google saw that and is taking over these markets with Android that does have all the features, customised for the region, coupled with cheap smartphones.
By the way, even the fairly poor here have smartphones, as the is the only way to be connected to the world for news, jobs, communicaton etc, as other infrastructures have failed.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. Here in Brazil iPhones are now being assembled in an Apple facility in São Paulo but still, they are the MOST EXPENSIVE IN THE WORLD to buy in this country. Presumably they have managed to cut import taxes somewhat but WTF?
“Basically, Tim has no desire to make great phones for poor people.” -_-
I think, you might have misinterpreted this one.
Making a flagship phone vs making phones for different price segment is different. I think he meant, he won’t lower the performance and hardware just to saturate those price bracket.
This could have been a reasonably good report, but it was ruined by some stupid editorializing. First, the title itself should have been “Tim Cook admits the iPhone is expensive,” because that’s really all that he said in the article. He didn’t say “too damn.” Second, the statement “Basically, Tim has no desire to make great phones for poor people” does not appear to be a statement of fact according to what was reported. Again, going from the article, Tim only says he doesn’t want to make cheap, low quality phones. Why would the author leap to the conclusion that Tim does not want to make great phones for poor people? Even if this were true, it is not what was reported.