Verizon Wireless’ CDMA iPhone 4 and the upcoming iPhone 5 may not be the only versions of Apple’s hit smartphone headed to market this year. A leak from the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer giant suggests it has another trick up its sleeve in the form of a cheaper, scaled-down handset.
One possibility reportedly under consideration would be to sell that device, about one-third smaller with no home button, directly for $200 without a subsidy from a mobile carrier. That’s about the price of the 16-gigabyte iPhone with a two-year voice and data contract from AT&T or Verizon.
Apple and AT&T already sell a cheap iPhone — the last-generation 3GS, for just $49. That device has a lower screen resolution, a weaker camera, and less memory than its iPhone 4 successor, which starts at $199.
Fighting Android, Nokia
Citing “people who have been briefed about the plan,” Bloomberg News reported Friday that the cheaper iPhones are part of a strategy to ward off Google’s Android operating system, which recent surveys suggest is now the leading mobile platform in both the U.S. and worldwide.
Apple also wants to gain on Nokia which, according to the most recent study by Gartner Research, remains the world’s leading mobile-device manufacturer with 28.9 percent of the market compared to Apple’s fifth-place 2.9 percent, based in 2010 sales.
Nokia on Thursday announced a major deal with Microsoft to use the software giant’s Windows Phone 7 on the Finnish manufacturer’s smartphones, replacing its own Symbian operating system, which has been getting yawns from consumers in the important U.S. market. Nokia’s inexpensive phones, however, are popular in Europe and Asia. Cheaper iPhones could attack that lead in developing countries.
Bloomberg also said Apple, which ended its exclusive U.S. arrangement with AT&T this month with the introduction of Verizon’s iPhone, is working on several solutions to open the…