Despite a flurry of rumors, Apple won't be making a cheaper iPhone any time soon, according to senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller.
Schiller reportedly told Chinese-language daily the Shanghai Evening News that "despite the popularity of cheap smartphones, this will never be the future of Apple's products."
The Apple executive's full explanation, as related by The Next Web in a report citing the newspaper's interview, included a nod to Apple's industry-leading profit margins and appeared to argue that those would be threatened if the company started making lower quality products.
"At first, non-smartphones were popular in the Chinese market, now cheap smartphones are more popular and non-smartphones are out," Shchiller was quoted as saying. "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 percent, we own the 75 percent of the profit."
Apple did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The Next Web said Apple had confirmed that Schiller's interview with the Shanghai Evening News was official.
The notion that Apple was planning a cheaper iPhone for release in late 2013 in certain markets, particularly Asian markets, was jump-started by a report from Taiwanese tech journal DigiTimes but also appeared in some form in reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal.
The rumor quickly got the tech press and industry analysts buzzing—for example, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimated Wednesday that a low-cost iPhone could rake in upwards of $6.5 billion a year for Apple.
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