There's an obvious difference between "a cheaper phone" and making the range as affordable as it was five years ago - instead of relying on so-called luxury branding while offering very little extra and annoying customers with product issues (missing headphone jack, BatteryGate, etc) and mediocre software updates.
Apple doesn't have an iPhone problem. Apple has an Apple problem.
It's at least possible (who knows for sure...?) that if Jobs were still alive Apple would have opened up at least a couple of innovative new product lines by now - not just gimmicks like Watch, but new "I didn't know I wanted that, but now I see it I obviously do" products, with supporting services and industry partners, all pitched at the affordable-at-a-push level that Apple products originally lived in.
This is where Cook has failed. There's nothing new on the table. Putting up prices is a short-term tactic. So is "a cheap phone".
What Apple needs is a coherent and impressive long-term strategy, and investors aren't seeing that.
Well of course Apple, and every other company needs that. But hoping for a savior is not a plan.
Now it's just like, "Why'd they take off the ports on this laptop? It's a weird brown color. And two of the keys don't work, already." To make it worse, everything is the same. You can't tell anything apart? Is this the Air? Wait, it's the old Pro? Which watch is this? Is this the XR or the XS? What's the difference?
Microsoft is sitting on such an amazing ecosystem and it feels like they just don't know how to tie it all together sometimes.
2.25x multiple
With customisation you can easily reach 3x.
The idea being pushed is cannibalization by a better product, not lower prices.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/908575-one-of-job-s-busines...
1- Pricing not only says who can afford your product but also establishes a brand, determines channel, & more.
2- The first key to having low priced offerings is that you have to have a set of partners who are willing to compete on thin margins in order to bring the product to market.
3- When people say Apple needs a cheaper phone there are many questions to answer beyond the get over yourself luxury brand issue.
4- What is distribution constraint? What partner absorbs some cost to leave margin? What is the branding?
5-Easy question — would a cheap phone be sold and supported in Apple stores side by side? How would the rest of the customers feel about more crowds and tougher appointments competing with people who paid half as much? Sell one phone against another—how?
6- Anyone that thinks Apple is unaware of the challenge and has not sketched out ideas, tested them, and thought about them immensely is crazy.
7- What does all this mean? Apple may or may not have a “pricing” or “price point” or “structural” / secular challenge. For sure just releasing a cheap phone doesn’t make all better.
All takes place in context of lots of cheap/bad competitive phones.
(1): https://mobile.twitter.com/stevesi/status/108117488690147328...