At every conference for the presentation of iPhone terminals, Apple says that the price of these devices starts at $199, but we are talking about prices that are offered by mobile phone operators in the US only if the terminal is purchased with a 2-year subscription. Unfortunately for Apple, there are not many countries where terminals are sold with such substantial subsidies, and in those countries Android is much more popular than iOS. According to those from Wall Street Journal, in countries like Greece or Portugal, Android terminals are much more sought after because they are available at lower prices, and Apple has a big problem because even the iPhone 4 cannot be bought at such attractive prices.
In the US, where contract plans and phone subsidies dominate, IDC says that around 90% of smartphone shipments over the past four years were for devices that cost more than $300 — despite the recession and uncertain recovery. In Italy, where prepaid plans dominate, that proportion was 67% last year, and in crisis-hit Greece and Portugal, only about 40% of the smartphones shipped in 2011 cost more than $300.
In these countries, mobile phone operators do not pay enormous amounts of money from the very beginning to subsidize many iPhone terminals and Apple loses a lot of customers because there are enough people who would buy an iPhone if it were available at the price of an Android terminal. In Romania, things are a little different, mobile phone operators offer iPhones at acceptable prices with two-year subscriptions, but Android smartphones are cheaper and in our country the market share of iOS is much lower than of Android OS.
The strategy of those from Apple to offer iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S does not seem to bear fruit because iPhone 4S amounted to 90% of the total sales of smartphones recorded by Apple in Q4 2011, so the old devices are not so much anymore attractive to users. If Apple had launched a cheaper model of the iPhone 4S, then things would definitely have been different.
