Image credit: Ben Buffone
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster is reading into the “let’s talk” portion of the headline from invitations sent out today for Apple’s upcoming October 4th media event. In fact, he thinks it’s indeed a clue to the new iPhone’s Assistant feature that 9to5Mac told you about first.
“In the past,” Munster writes in a note to clients, “Apple has used its invitation to include cryptic hints as to what it will announce. The phrase on this year’s invite, ‘Let’s talk iPhone’ may be a simple play on words, but may also refer to new speech-based features for the iPhone.”
Some have also speculated the red “1” badge on the phone icon of the invitation as hinting at only one device being launched, rather than two variations. Munster thinks two iPhones will be launched on October 4th, however he doesn’t expect the low-end, inexpensive model that has been rumored. Rather, he expects a full-fledged iPhone 5 that will sell at the $199/ $299 price point, in addition to a refreshed iPhone 4 (or iPhone 4S) for $99:
We Do Not Expect a Low-End iPhone. Some investors are looking for Apple to announce a low-end iPhone that Apple could sell to carriers for less than $300 vs. the current carrier cost of over $600. This would enable carriers to offer affordable, unsubsidized iPhones and further penetrate more price-sensitive markets. However, we do not expect Apple to announce such a device on 10/4. Rather, we expect Apple to continue with a lead device (iPhone 5) that carriers sell subsidized for $199/ $299 along with a previous generation device (iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S) for $99.
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