Turns out we may be saying goodbye to that bright, plastic iPhone we’ve grown to love or hate.
Production for the iPhone 5C, by far the lowest-priced iPhone of Apple’s range, will shut down next year, according to a report by Taiwan’s Industrial and Commercial Times (via MacRumors). Apple suppliers Wistron and Foxconn are already looking to wind down production of the device.
This news will probably not cause much unhappiness. From its tacky outercase colours to its not-very-budget budget price tag, the iPhone 5C has never been a very welcomed member of the Apple family. It saw lower sales than expected during its debut in 2013, easily overshadowed by its iPhone 5s counterpart. Its marketing efforts, in contrast with Apple’s usual viral ads, was virtually non-existent. TechRadar went as far as to say that it was “not much more than 2012’s device shoved in a plastic case.”
Apple’s iPhone 5c saw lower-than-expected sales after its debut in 2013, partly due to high demand for the then-flagship iPhone 5s. This sparked its title of Apple’s failure flop, with Apple ad man Ken Segall saying in his blogpost about the iPhone 5C: “Steve Jobs was right. Apple is a company that doesn’t do ‘cheap.’
However, there is a camp that will miss the iPhone 5C. According to an Apple Insider report, the iPhone 5C still managed to outsell its mid-range counterparts released at the time, showing that there is a market for the iPhone’s plastic counterpart. There’s no news whether this will mean that Apple is giving up plastic completely, or we will expect a plastic version of the iPhone 6, complete with Touch ID functionalities.
So until then – Goodbye iPhone 5C. I won’t miss you.
