Tim Cook Says Apple Won't Make Cheap iPhones, Proceeds To Sell Cheap iPhones

Apple will never make a cheap iPhone, chief executive Tim Cook said in an interview just before his company unveiled a new lower-cost iPhone.

"We’re not in the junk business," Cook told Bloomberg Businessweek's Sam Grobart in an interview published Thursday. "I’m not going to lose sleep over that other market, because it’s just not who we are. "

Wait, what?

Though some are calling the iPhone 5c, the iPhone Apple released on pre-order this week, "cheap," it's really more just a less expensive version of the popular smartphone. The 5C costs $100 less than the 5S -- $549 compared to $649, without subsidies in America.

"We never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone,” Cook told Businessweek. “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.”

In the months leading up to the announcement of the 5C and its high-end sister phone the 5S, rumors swirled that Apple would put out a lower-cost phone to appeal to buyers in emerging markets priced out of iPhones, who turn to cheaper Android devices. Recently, Apple fell behind Samsung in global Internet usage on smartphones.

After the unveil, many were left wondering what Apple was doing with it's not-so-cheap, cheap phone, which still will likely be too high-priced for those markets.

The mystery will be closer to solved when the phone goes on sale Friday.