Speculation on $99 iPhone at Wal-Mart

Rumors of a pending deal to sell the iPhone 3G at Wal-Mart are bouncing around between mainstream media, bloggers and analysts.
The San Jose Mercury News reported Friday that Apple Inc. may sell a 4-GB iPhone model for $99.
According to analyst Maynard Um at UBS, however, that would be a departure from Apple’s premium-brand strategy.
A $149 model would be “more logical,” the analyst wrote today. Um warned that such a strategy risked cannibalizing sales of the current 8 GB and 16 GB models selling at $200 and $300, respectively.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said that his company is satisfied with having a single hardware platform in the mobile-phone market. Thus speculation on the company’s options to further penetrate the cellphone market appears to have focused on a cheaper iPhone with less memory.