iPhone it is not known worldwide as a cheap smartphone, as a smartphone that you can buy for 2/300 euros and you can expect it to offer you an excellent experience. Although this is the perception now, the Apple company is trying to change it radically and is attacking the prepaid card market with cheaper iPhone models that it sells in various areas of the planet.
The iPhone was sold with prepaid cards in 12 models in 2016, but by the beginning of 2017 the Apple company increased this offer to no less than 46 models. We are talking here about a market where people who don't want subscriptions are willing to pay a full or partially subsidized price for an iPhone that can be used with a prepaid card, many operators having very good offers.
iPhone SE, iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 are the main smartphones that Apple sells at reasonable prices together with prepaid cards, but the offer will increase. You can see below how many iPhone models Apple sells to various mobile phone operators in the US, but also how much the offer has increased for some of them in the last year, due to Apple's desire to make more money.
The iPhone is seriously attacking the Android market in this way, because most of the Android smartphones sold worldwide are the very cheap ones, with prices below 300 dollars. There are not many iPhone terminals with prices lower than 300 dollars, but in the US with prepaid cards you can buy iPhone 5S terminals with prices from 49 dollars, iPhone SE with prices from 159 dollars and iPhone 6 with prices from 199 dollars.
"The iPhone's prepaid retail channel placements more than doubled from the second quarter of 2016 to the second quarter of 2017, growing from 15 SKUs to 46 SKUs, and they increased 35% from the first quarter of this year to the second quarter. MetroPCS recently launched the $199 32GB iPhone SE. For base models, Straight Talk as of 7/3 is selling the iPhone 5S for $99, the iPhone SE for $159, and the iPhone 6 for $199. Boost sells the iPhone 5S at $49.99 for porting customers.”
The iPhone at such a low price, even with a prepaid card, is attractive to many, and if Apple can segment Android sales from this very point, it will cause big problems for Samsung, LG, Sony and many others. The iPhone does not turn from a premium product into a cheap one, but as new models appear and the old ones remain on sale, it is normal for the price of the latter to decrease.
