The Apple Beat: Leaks and cases pointing to low-cost iPhone mounting

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

There's been a consistent stream of leaked photos pointing towards an upcoming low-cost iPhone, presumably to compete in emerging markets as well as offer users a cheaper alternative to the popular but premium iPhone 5. The latest is a photo from the WeiPhone Forums that show plastic retail cases for an iPhone 5C. The "C" may stand for colour or consumer, as it has been rumoured that the plastic enclosures of this device will be available in various colours aside from black or white.

Another possibility, which seems more plausible, is that the iPhone 5 will become the iPhone 5C but with a new plastic casing while the iPhone 5S will keep the premium stainless-steel and glass design plus additional features for the year.

Apple has promised a number of new products and possibly new categories in the Fall which is traditionally when new iPhones and iOS versions are rolled out. It will be interesting to see what the iPhone strategy will be moving forward and if, indeed, they will release two models of the iPhone simultaneously.

As for the coloured cases for the iPhone, they look a little questionable and a bit cheap-looking as far as I can tell from the pictures. They do seem covered in plastic so they might actually look a lot better in real life. I'm just thinking that Apple will have a lot of iPhone SKUs to deal with if they have various iPhones in the usual capacities of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB plus all the colours. We have a few more months of wait-and-see before the iPhone picture becomes clearer. Budget and iPhone in the same sentence still sounds strange to me.

Via: Mashable, Tactus, AppleInsider, WeiPhone