- "We never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone," says Tim Cook (AAPL +1.8%) in a BloombergBusinessweek cover story, defending the iPhone 5C's pricing amid criticism it's too expensive to challenge cheaper Android phones that have helped give Google's OS a 79% smartphone share (per IDC).
- Adds Cook: "There’s always a large junk part of the market ... We’re not in the junk business." Some might disagree all of the latest mid-range Android phones fit that description. Meanwhile, Jony Ive takes a not-so-subtle jab at Samsung's product strategy. "We didn’t start opportunistically with 10 bits of technology that we could try to find a use for to add to our features list."
- Gene Munster forecasts 5M-6M iPhones will be sold this weekend, after the 5S/5C go on sale on Friday. That's only a little above last year's 5M first-weekend iPhone 5 sales, something Munster attributes to supply constraints. BTIG is more optimistic, predicting at least 6M weekend sales.
- iOS 7 was installed on 29% of all iOS devices within 16 hours of yesterday's release. The download activity was strong enough to make total Internet traffic spike in parts of the U.S. and Europe; that's an incremental positive for Apple CDN partner Akamai (AKAM +0.4%).
- The Verge's David Pierce has given iOS 7 a score of 8/10. He's a fan of the OS' Control Center and improved notifications, but calls its design "disjointed and confusing in places," and its icons "horrible." "iOS 7 is full of big, sweeping changes ... but in the end the new visuals don’t offer much change under the surface. Not yet, anyway."