There's already a budget iPhone, you can still get the 3GS.

Isn't the iPhone 4 currently 'free' on most plans?

I doubt that photo is the 'budget' iPhone.
The 4s is free on some plans: http://www.three.co.uk/Store/Phones/iPhone/iPhone_4S

I don't know what's around right now, but my work colleague got his 3GS free on a 20 quid a month plan not long ago.

Now steve's dead we seem to be going back to the ways of the 90s. An apple product for every market. They should totally pursue that, it went really well last time. Until they brought jobs back and he screwed everything up by slashing the product line.

Exactly Apple do not need a budget iPhone. Older models are perfectly adequate unless they fail to allow them new iOS features.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.

More and more people are going onto contracts that don't have phones, at least over here. That means the price "with contract" is totally irrelevant, the price of the actual device is what counts.

4 of the last 5 phones that I bought were not part of the contract.

Here, you pay 19.95€ for all net flat with data flat (calls to all mobile networks and landline are free, plus 500MB a month unthrottled data). An additional 5€ gets an SMS flat and another 5€ get 1GB data. If you want a phone, you pay an additional 20€ a month for a "normal" smartphone, the 16GB iPhone 5 etc. will cost you 100€+ down plus 20 a month.

T-Mobile contracts are much more expensive than Blau, Yourfone, Simyo, Klarmobile etc. starting at around 40€ for a landline flat + data flat, but the phone is "free" (or an iPhone 5 16GB is 99€ down).

At least the other networks are more upfront about the costs.

Crikey, those deals are pricey.

That's what I thought Apple's strategy was.
Sell off old stock slightly cheaper without having to fork out on a new design, while maintaining premium brand model where phones have a high profit margin.

I think that they actually still make the older phones but with minimal memory so as to not cannibalise sales from the latest version.