In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Apple CEO Tim Cook discussed the company’s new iPhones, most notably the iPhone 5c, which isn’t as inexpensive as some observers anticipated. “We never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone,” Cook said. “Our primary objective is to sell a great phone and provide a great experience, and we figured out a way to do it at a lower cost.” Cook reiterated that Apple has no intention of releasing cheaper products just to grab more of the market. “There’s always a large junk part of the market,” he said. “We’re not in the junk business.”
Apple chief designer Jonathan Ive and software head Craig Federighi were also interviewed — the story notes their desks are “a one-minute walk from one another.” Ive said of the iPhone 5s fingerprint scanner, “There are so many problems that had to be solved to enable one big idea.” He noted that it wasn’t a goal of Apple to merely add to the iPhone’s features list. Federighi added, “New? New is easy. Right is hard.”
Update: Bloomberg Businessweek has released a complete transcript of the interview with Jony Ive and Craig Federighi. Ive notes the fingerprint sensor took a long time to develop, and was specifically developed around a chip to prevent malicious scanning or data theft. A full transcript of the Tim Cook interview was also released.