Comparing Apples to Apples

Apple iPhone 4S

Apple iPhone 5

Apple, on October 4 2011, has launched Apple iPhone 4S instead of the much awaited iPhone 5. So, what's the reason behind this move?? Was it a complete "oops" move or a well thought out strategy?? Let's analyse

Apple 's market share in the smartphone's industry is at stake with  Android coalition taking up 41.7 % market share (Economic Times). 

So what does Apple do now??

It creates hype for Apple iPhone 5 & instead launches 4S. 4S is essentially an up- gradation over iPhone 4 with 8mp camera, "Siri" software for voice recognition, more memory, better & faster processing, iCloud storage (iCloud stores your music, photos, documents, and more and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices),etc etc. Effectively priced at $199 (16GB)-$399(64GB), Apple is probably aiming towards capturing the lower tiered smartphone market in order to gain max share before Google comes up with its exclusive handsets with android, before coming up with the premium priced iPhone 5, which will not have much to offer in terms of software up gradation from that of the 4S. 

Rumors also suggest that iPhone 5 launch is just to "save face" for the company, since the testing of iPhone 5 did not go quite well (it used to heat up too quickly, being slimmer than 4), it needed time with the hardware part. So in order to "save face", all the software up-gradations in iPhone 5 were thrown into the 4S.

Now we ask, will the Apple loyals be dissapointed?

And the answer comes largely : NO. They swear by the technology that it offers, being enthusiastic about the recent launch, even though compromising on the looks of the phone which is exactly like their old iPhone 4. However, they do not give up hope on the "soon" launch of iPhone 5.

And even if some are dissapointed, a question comes up into my mind... Is it because of the number game? 4S instead of 5?? Because the technology would be the same & if its because of the looks, then I'm sorry I guess the value proposition of Apple is not clear to them.

Any which way, I guess it has got what it had wanted - huge publicity !!

Cheers

Rashi