Investors have already been concerned that Apple's strategy of keeping the price of the iPhone high means it's losing out on sales, particularly overseas. Consumers are instead opting to buy cheaper smartphones running Google Inc.'s Android software, which has propelled South Korea's Samsung Electronics to the world's largest maker of smartphones. The average wholesale price of the iPhone is $640, hundreds of dollars more than smartphones with comparable hardware.
There's speculation among company watchers that the company will produce a cheaper iPhone, but that would cut into its profit margin and could tarnish the company's image as a purveyor of premium products.
Apple had warned that the holiday quarter's profits would be lower than Wall Street was initially expecting, because it had so many new products coming out, including the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini. New production lines are more expensive to run and yield more defective products that need to be redone or thrown out rather than sold.
___
AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Reader Comments (