After nearly an year of competing in the global smartphone market, the iPhone 5 is no more. Apple has decided to discontinue last year’s flagship smartphone and replace it with the new iPhone 5C. Traditionally, whenever the company has released a new iPhone, it discounted the previous one to $99 on contract and offered the one before that for free, on contract. Instead of doing that this year, Apple packaged the internals of iPhone 5 into the iPhone 5C, slapped colorful polycarbonate shells on top and discontinued its previous smartphone. Filling the $99 on contract spot now is the 16GB iPhone 5C.
Customers who’re willing to be tied to a two year contract but don’t want to put any money down for a new iPhone can now opt for an iPhone 4S, which is being offered for free, on contract. It makes sense that the company has discontinued iPhone 5, because it would have been in the same price point as the iPhone 5C, Apple can’t sell two iPhones for the same price. If it would have offered the iPhone 5 for free on contract, the move probably might have hurt iPhone 5C sales, considering the fact that there are major hardware differences between the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, while there are no significant hardware differences between iPhone 5 and iPhone 5C.
Filed in . Read more about iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and iPhone 5C.