Apple is planning to lower the prices of the next iPhones to promote the new services launched by the company
In recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk about the return of the low cost iPhone. Some call it iPhone SE2, others iPhone 9, others iPhone SE X or iPhone XE, but the substance does not change: Apple is about to present the successor of its (currently) only affordable phone, the old iPhone SE.
It is now also a further hypothesis, which has nothing official but that is entirely reasonable, according to which the presentation of this device is actually aimed at pushing the online subscription services from Apple. In particular Apple Tv+. The reasoning fits: the more Apple devices there are around, the more likely users are to start using Apple's subscription services. Lowering the threshold for entry into the Apple ecosystem, then, would allow the ecosystem itself to grow. Even if on the services side and not on the products side. To confirm this hypothesis there would also be the fact that, at least at the moment, users who have shown interest in Apple TV + are very few.
iPhone 9: how it will be
The idea of Apple, therefore, would be to put on the market a low-medium range device, with good technical features but without any real technological innovation. As with the first SE, then, it would take existing hardware and previous generation to assemble a new device. The base would be the old iPhone 8 (and for this some speak of iPhone 9, number "jumped" by Apple), enhanced with the SoC A13 Bionic and equipped with 3GB of RAM and 64 or 128 GB of internal memory. The screen, of course, would only be a 4.7-inch LCD (but IPS). The main camera would be single, 12 MP, and should return the physical Home button with integrated Touch ID. The price? It is speculated to launch in America at $350-400.
Apple Tv+ still doesn't take off
To reinforce the hypothesis that Apple wants to introduce a cheap iPhone to push its digital subscription services there is especially the fact that only 10% of new Apple users who are eligible to activate the twelve-month free trial have actually done so. Apple Tv+ does indeed have 10 million users today, but Apple sold 90 million devices in the last quarter of 2019. The data, then, doesn't add up, and Apple has two ways to go: sell more iPhones, even if it makes less on each device, and make the Apple Tv+ offering more palatable.