It's certainly interesting. It basically seems to be translating the old Macintosh consumer/"pro" division to the iPhone: remember the choice between a white plastic MacBook and a brushed-metal MacBook Pro? Now, everyone I knew who could afford it bought an MBP even if they weren't "pros" in any relevant sense, or any sense at all, but the Pro label probably helped to soften the impression of business-class/economy-class stratification. If anything the new 5S seems to be pursuing luxury-brand status more wholeheartedly than the MBP - the famous gold-finish 5S seems to gesture broadly in the direction of blingphones like the http://www.vertu.com/ Vertu. It is certainly a change from the old, (notionally) classless and one-for-all image of the iPod.
> Of course, this might be a calculated move to move away from exclusivity, in which case those things make sense. But that would be a little baffling in itself, given the huge profit margins a premium brand commands (while still having huge market share in Apple's case) compared to any old mass market device.
On the one hand, it seems the smartphone market has now matured to the point where Apple can't just charge the same margins and hope to maintain the same sales and ("Developers! Developers! Developers!") market share. Probably because the remaining big growth in smartphones is now in developing economies, especially in China. Tim Cook talked quite a lot about China at the iPhone 5S/C launch. (Meanwhile many US and other saturated-economy consumers are probably a bit more price-sensitive now too, aware of decent Android 4.x alternatives at lowish prices.) The consumer/"pro" split allows the cheaper, more-mass-market iPhone to have a design and a branding which makes it desirable in its own right, allows it to look up-to-date rather than stuck on whatever was fashionable 18 or 24 months ago, and makes it less obviously a hand-me-down product. Meanwhile, the high-end iPhone can maintain its price premium and its halo of desirability - in fact it its image can now be more clearly exclusive than before. (So matching the increasing "one-percentisation" of society: two birds with one stone.) Yes, this means there are now two iPhone sub-brands rather than just one, but two is not excessively many: it worked rather well for the Mac, after all.
There's also the claims you hear that many Asian markets rather like big, splashy colours, and that they didn't really love the iPhone's relative sombreness. I can't say how true that actually is, but it would stand to reason that in markets where the iPhone was never all that huge the customers would not be all that sold on the mystique of the One True Phone and its unmatchable design, and would quite like Apple to meet them halfway on appearance as well as price.
> Of course, this might be a calculated move to move away from exclusivity, in which case those things make sense. But that would be a little baffling in itself, given the huge profit margins a premium brand commands (while still having huge market share in Apple's case) compared to any old mass market device.
On the one hand, it seems the smartphone market has now matured to the point where Apple can't just charge the same margins and hope to maintain the same sales and ("Developers! Developers! Developers!") market share. Probably because the remaining big growth in smartphones is now in developing economies, especially in China. Tim Cook talked quite a lot about China at the iPhone 5S/C launch. (Meanwhile many US and other saturated-economy consumers are probably a bit more price-sensitive now too, aware of decent Android 4.x alternatives at lowish prices.) The consumer/"pro" split allows the cheaper, more-mass-market iPhone to have a design and a branding which makes it desirable in its own right, allows it to look up-to-date rather than stuck on whatever was fashionable 18 or 24 months ago, and makes it less obviously a hand-me-down product. Meanwhile, the high-end iPhone can maintain its price premium and its halo of desirability - in fact it its image can now be more clearly exclusive than before. (So matching the increasing "one-percentisation" of society: two birds with one stone.) Yes, this means there are now two iPhone sub-brands rather than just one, but two is not excessively many: it worked rather well for the Mac, after all.
There's also the claims you hear that many Asian markets rather like big, splashy colours, and that they didn't really love the iPhone's relative sombreness. I can't say how true that actually is, but it would stand to reason that in markets where the iPhone was never all that huge the customers would not be all that sold on the mystique of the One True Phone and its unmatchable design, and would quite like Apple to meet them halfway on appearance as well as price.