Yes, of course. We all know that the glass and metal cost hundreds of dollars.

Seriously, plastic will cut a few dollars off the price. What else can Apple do to bring the cost down?

Apple producing cheap phone? No way! They don't even make cheap Mac. It's probably a knock-off counterfeit iPhonie from a company in China.

Originally Posted by hayesk

What else can Apple do to bring the cost down?

Basic ongoing tech evolution allows them to bring the cost down. E.g. the iPhone 1 display no doubt cost hella more than the same display today, and a few mm smaller would be cheaper still.

Existing high margins allow them to bring the price down by reducing margins on the lower end products. Benefits of market share to the ecosystem may even justify very low margins on the lower end iPhones.

High-volume plastic is cheaper than high-volume machined metal, and a less expensive iPhone may well have truly huge volume, lending itself to good cost benefits from the latest high-volume plastic manufacturing technology.

Also a differentiated-as-less-expensive product need not present absolute top latest-tech performance like a flagship product must.

Some features can be dropped or can be lower end. Camera for instance. Retina display for another.

However overall product quality _must_ be kept at very good.

-Allen

Note also that now-common LTE makes presenting the older non-LTE iPhone versions as the entry level a less acceptable strategy. Entry-level iPhones (but with LTE) make a lot of sense.

Though I personally much prefer the metal-glass type phones, Apple has already (previously) made good-looking plastic phones before (the first few iPhones) so we know that is possible. We also know that plastic has some resiliency, and that it's better for antenna issues. That's why so many non-iPhone phones are made of plastic.

However, it's an environmental wreck and (even though NO OTHER COMPANY gets stick for this) I can hear Greenpeace screaming from here at the very thought of a new plastic smartphone from Apple. So I really don't think that's going to happen unless Apple has invented some kind of highly-recycleable plastic shell that can be used.

Apple has historically tried to ADD VALUE to premium designs rather than scale downwards, so it will be interesting to see if they even WANT to come up with a cheapo iPhone. So far, all I've *actually* seen evidence of is Apple seeking to lower the cost of manufacturing the EXISTING iPhones.

Originally Posted by chas_m

Though I personally much prefer the metal-glass type phones, Apple has already (previously) made good-looking plastic phones before (the first few iPhones)

Second and third iPhone (3G/3GS).

The first one was aluminium (though it had a plastic bottom end for the antenna).