People love their smartphones. There's a big market for them, and millions of people are buying them due to their usefulness and versatility. For some time now, Apple has been the reigning producer of mobile devices with their highly popular iPhone series. Apple was the only producer of these phones and this exclusivity was only made more so through it's sole contracts with AT&T. Only recently did Apple allow the iPhone's sale through other companies. This still has done little to bring down the price, and only recently, did Apple bring down the price of it's older generation model, the 3G S series, to an affordable rate.
However, there may be cheaper options in store for consumers in the near future.
In the beginning, Apple didn't have much in the way of serious competition on the mobile market. They could afford to charge high fees because people wanted them and were willing to pay any price. Now that mobile technology is catching up with Apple, more people who want a smartphone might look to other providers for cost-effective alternatives. So, Apple has announced that there may be plans to introduce a cheaper iPhone in the near future in order to capture this part of the market that wants to buy smartphones, but can't shell out hundreds of dollars to get one.
According to the Reuters news agency, Apple is currently in talks with Chinese mobile producers, and there's the possibility that some of the new iPhones could be launched in a very short period of time. By some estimates, as little as a few weeks. These versions would be much cheaper versions of the iPhone4 and would still have many of the same features and capabilities of the devices produced by Apple. You'd still be able to make calls, phone number lookup, and use apps, to name a few. It's unclear though if this price reduced option will have the same quality that Apple has insisted on for years.
This is one of the main excuses from Apple to explain why they wouldn't let anyone else make the iPhone. Apple Inc. explained that the decision was made to keep the quality of the product high. It seems that this isn't as important as it once was now that Nokia, Microsoft, and other companies are catching up to Apple's technological capabilities.
It's not for certain whether this will happen or not. It's far more likely that Apple will instead cut the price of the iPhone 4 when the next version comes out this autumn. What is almost a given is that eventually Apple will look to China to create cheaper versions of its products.