China and the cloud are driving down iPhone 5 and tablet prices
January 7, 2013
Grazed from The National. Author: Tony Glover.
This year, prices of IT devices such as tablet computers and smartphones are set to fall as Asian manufacturers undercut western IT companies. At the end of last year, even top-of-the-range Apple products such as the iPhone 5 were being heavily discounted by electronics retailers in the United States such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Radio Shack and Target.
Wall Street analysts from Pacific Crest, Canaccord Genuity, Mizuho Securities, UBS and Jeffries & Co swiftly sliced between US$50 (Dh183) and $100 from their Apple share targets, believing this to be the start of an inexorable drop in IT prices. The US technology investment bank Pacific Crest cut its sales expectations for Apple from 174 million devices to 151 million for this year, and from 181 million to 161 million for 2014…
Apple has been forced to adjust its pricing policy in the face of growing competition from rivals such as South Korea’s Samsung and China’s ZTE, which this year intends to boost plans to take the US smartphone market by storm with its lower-priced products. ZTE is expected to launch a tablet early next month that will sell for $99 in America. ZTE’s seven-inch Optik tablet will compete directly with the market leaders, offering features such as two high-definition cameras…
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