Bloombergs authors Peter Burrows and Greg Bensinger have reported on anonymous sources revealing that Apple has apparently developed a prototype iPhone model that is cheaper and one-third smaller than the current-generation iPhone 4.
Could this be the iPhone 5? Or some sort of iPhone Nano to squeeze into the market?
They claim that this smaller iPhone could be priced as low as $200 without a contract hoping that it will help Apple compete with the huge surge in Android sales over the past year or two.
One version would be cheaper and smaller than the most recent iPhone, said a person who has seen a prototype and asked not to be identified because the plans haven't been made public. Apple also is developing technology that makes it easier to use the iPhone on multiple wireless networks, two people said.
The main reason while Android is doing better than Apple at the moment is the price gap, any iPhone is still much more expensive than an Android smartphone in general.
If it was priced at just $200 for a contract free iPhone, this would allow carriers to offer subsidies selling the phone for free.
Whether or not this iPhone could come to light still remains unseen, it's not clear if it will actually make it into production at this stage.
While Apple has aimed to unveil the device near mid-year, the introduction may be delayed or scrapped, the person said. Few Apple employees know the details of the project, the person said. Apple often works on products that do not later get released.
The report also mentions that Apple are working on another iPhone, quite possibly the iPhone 5 which will on both CDMA and GSM networks, making it a more world wide universal device which could be used on most networks, as well as the idea of in built sim cards
We did hear rumors of an iPhone Nano years ago, but that never came to light, I wonder if this is just another one of those?
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