Responding to recent reports that Apple is designing a cheaper version of its hit iPhone for developing markets, Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller told China’s Shanghai Evening News on Wednesday that “despite the popularity of cheap smartphones,” they “will never be the future of Apple’s products.” As Schiller said in a quote translated in The Next Web:
“At first, non-smartphones were popular in the Chinese market, now cheap smartphones are more popular and non-smartphones are out,” Schiller added later. “Despite the popularity of cheap smartphones, this will never be the future of Apple’s products. In fact, although Apple’s market share of smartphones is just about 20%, we own the 75% of the profit.”
As the New York Times technology reporter Brian X. Chen noted on Twitter: “Note that Schiller dismisses the possibility of a cheap smartphone, not a cheapER smartphone.”
