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iPhone 5C will sell more 5S models than the iPhone 5 ever would have

The iPhone 5C isn't the "cheap" model we thought it would be.

Picture yourself in the not-so-distant future, a consumer in the market for a shiny new iPhone. You approach a store, be it retail or online, and trail your eyes over the various models on display.

Your inexpensive options are a little scattered. There is the free iPhone 4S, hardly a compelling product with its old form factor and hardware profile. If you spend only $100, you can get a brightly colored, plastic-backed model, the new iPhone 5C. Or, for only yet another $100, you get the latest, highest-end iPhone 5S, cast of glass and metal with a futuristic fingerprint reader. Which do you choose?

The iPhone 5C has already received a lot of attention for its carefree design approach (I can't help but be reminded of Discovery Zone by those colors and hole-punch cases). While it’s still the same old iPhone 5 on the inside, the 5C is making waves because of how big a departure it is from Apple’s usual approach of glass, aluminum, and neutral colors for its handset.

The 5C’s style will no doubt appeal to some consumers and even capture a couple of new demographics. But as for the “cheap" iPhone we were expecting... well, the iPhone 5C isn't it. The fact that it is not rounding out Apple’s low-end product line as was predicted suggests that Cupertino might have intentions for it beyond appealing to kids and the fashion-conscious among us.

So I heard you wanted a phone that comes in many of the same colors as a popsicle.
Enlarge / So I heard you wanted a phone that comes in many of the same colors as a popsicle.

Perhaps the design of the 5C is intended to push buyers into throwing down an extra $100 to get the only viably professional-looking iPhone. Under this scenario, the 5C exists, to an extent, to usher all but the most casual users into the arms of the 5S.

Since 2008, Apple has offered last year’s iPhone model with an unchanged form factor as the next step down in price. On the off-year where the iPhone form factor hasn’t changed from the year before (3GS, 4S, and now 5S) and improvements are arguably more incremental, customers can pick up last year’s version for $100 cheaper with less of a psychological cost than in years when the form factor does change. When it came to the iPhone 4 and 4S or 3G and 3GS side-by-side in stores, the two looked and felt the same; there were a few differences under the hood, but they were arguably things that don't matter as much to price-sensitive buyers.

By changing the outward form factor of its mid-range phone so drastically, Apple is positioning its highest-end model even higher and further away from the rest of its offerings. And Apple isn’t just pushing that difference for this year by taking the identical iPhone 5 off the table as a step down from the 5S; this is likely a change it is making to its lineup for all time, drawing a big visual distinction between its newest phone and all the rest.

The importance of fun, colored, eminently consumer-level products to Apple’s success cannot be underestimated. The Bondi blue iMacs and colored iBooks of the late '90s were integral to the company’s big turnaround following Steve Jobs’ return to the company, and the color palette for the iPod mini made them an unprecedented success in that line of products.

As Ars Editor-at-Large Jacqui Cheng wrote following the announcement, this is Apple doing something smart for Apple: “The iPhone 5C is the iPhone 5, and Apple found a cheaper way to produce it.” Repackaging last years’ news gives also Apple two big announcements where there would normally be one: not only does it have the new-and-improved iPhone 5S, but it also has the old iPhone 5 spun into something fun and fashionable.

Product segmentation, particularly segments structured with a lower-end product that exists to make the next step up look compelling, is an old, old strategy. Apple’s desire to capture the young-and-casual as well as price-sensitive users with the iPhone 5C is clear, but we can’t ignore the fact that it makes the iPhone 5S look a darned sight better by comparison than the iPhone 5 ever would have.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham

Channel Ars Technica