Rumours of the fabled, cut-price iPhone Nano got a new lease of life today, after industry sources testified that a lower-end kit is very much part of Apple’s 2011 strategy.
According to an “incredibly solid source” cited by Boy Genius Report, the handset, which the site posits could be dubbed the iPhone 4S, will sell for a wallet-friendly $350 - a shade over £215 in proper money.
The tech deep throat also revealed that the phone is aimed at the pay as you go market and will go on sale sans contract later this year, presumably along with the iPhone 5 which is widely expected to drop in August or September.
Speculation that Apple is looking to move away from its “premium product at a premium price” policy with a more affordable smartphone have been rife for years.
However, the rumours have gained fresh credence of late amid the rise of the rival Android platform, which has been propelled to a market-leading position in the US principally by a slew of cheap and mid-range smarties running Google’s OS. So rapid has its growth been that some 550,000 Android devices are now being activated every day new figures reveal.
The unofficial ‘Nano’ sobriquet attached to the mooted cheapie iPhone by tech watchers stems principally from the fact that it is expected to be a more compact bit of kit than earlier iterations.
To keep costs down, Apple is rumoured to be planning to recycle components from earlier iPhones.
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