A trickle of rumors about a cheaper iPhone has recently turned into a gush. This would seem to lend support to the idea that a budget iPhone really is about to launch at the end of 2013. But it’s puzzling that the rumors don’t seem to converge on one product concept. On the contrary, they point to opposite directions. Perhaps the most imposing article written on the topic was published by Bloomberg on January 9th. The story echoed a Wall Street Journal piece from January 8th, but Bloomberg went one decisive step further than WSJ by giving a very specific retail price range for the cheap iPhone: $99 to $149. This, of course, would hit the phone market like a neutron bomb. The current retail price of a two-year old iPhone model is about $350. So Bloomberg in effect claimed that Apple is considering undercutting the price of an iPhone launched two generations ago by 57%.
