Dean Bubley

2009 Will Be a Painful Year for Mobile Device Vendors

The amount of memory really isn't going to be the determinant of Apple's lower-end price point.

Bear in mind that the $200 iPhone price points only apply on long-term contracts (usually 2 years), that imply a large subsidy by the carrier.

The "real" price of the iPhone 3G is more like $350-500. Certainly, if you buy it on prepay, it's a $500+ device, and in some countries more like $800.

I certainly think that there's a reasonable opportunity for Apple to expand its market share, but of the overall global 1-billion phone market, it's probably chasing realistic addressable target of 5% or so for the foreseeable future, although 50m phones is a pretty tempting target.

A more interesting prospect is if Apple introduces a smaller "iPhone Nano", or better still a clamshell version, as there is a large part of the market that would never go near a large tablet-type device.