Cheaper iPhone: Way To Go

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Forbes: Apple: Cheaper iPhone Could Expand Addressable Market By 6x: expand distribution to more carriers .... add the 8 largest carriers that do not currently offer the iPhone .... address the mass market by offering a reduced price version of the iPhone ..... the company is considering doing just that. The new version of the phone would have a much smaller screen size, and be sold to carriers for about half the price of the current iPhone ...... Apple’s move downscale would involve a non-data plan phone. ..... iPhone 5 .. to arrive in June ...... an iPhone without a data plan. “Like the iPod Touch, this device would be able to handle music, movies, Internet (via WiFi or cellular), and third-party apps” ..... such a phone could sell for $149 and $199 at retail and require only a voice plan

An iPhone actually costs as much as a cheap Dell laptop. Think about it. That is ridiculous. You feel like you paid $200, when you actually paid more like $500. They put you on a monthly plan. Every month you pay a little bit for two years. It is like buying a house. The house takes 30 years, the iPhone takes two years. That is ridiculous.

Apple should try but I believe the mass market already belongs to Android. The neutered iPhones that Apple intends to serve for lower prices will be matched, have been matched by fully functional large screen Android phones in those same price ranges. Why not buy a full phone for cheap? Why buy an iPhone?

The Bitly Story

The Bitly of today was not the Bitly that got launched. Bitly was launched by visionary founders as a site where if you got bit by a dog, you would take the picture of the dog, the bite, and your face in pain, and you would post the pictures online to share with the world. That was the idea. But it was way ahead of its times. The word spotting had not been invented yet.

And so Bitly pivoted and became the URL shortener that you know today. And it has been quite a success, would you say?