Despite both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal claiming that Apple plans to sell a cheaper version of the iPhone this year, Apple has put these rumors to rest today. When asked to comment about the rumors of a possible lower-cost iPhone release, Apple's Senior VP Phil Schiller officially stated that Apple's sole focus is in creating the best quality products, and that it does not intend to sacrifice the build quality and hardware in order to produce a more competitively priced smartphone for the mass market.

Interviewer Huang Yinlong spoke to Schiller about Apple’s products in China who said that “every product that Apple creates, we consider using only the best technology available. This includes the production pipeline, the Retina display, the unibody design, to provide the best product to the market.”

“At first, non-smartphones were popular in the Chinese market, now cheap smartphones are more popular and non-smartphones are out,” Schiller added later. “Despite the popularity of cheap smartphones, this will never be the future of Apple’s products. In fact, although Apple’s market share of smartphones is just about 20%, we own the 75% of the profit.”