That's just the thing. Jobs did not want to be involved in the race to the bottom in terms of price. If they are going to cut expenses, they are not going to want to drop the price with it.
Jobs wanted to make expensive phones that people would expect to pay a premium for. He left the problem of making it affordable to the cell companies who stepped in and subsidized it with contracts.
Jobs wanted people to pay good money for his stuff. Part of that is *not* wanting to be compared to the latest effort from some other phone at the same price point. It starts becoming a real brutal game if you join the rest that way. If the 5C is priced with a larger field of phones, there is a higher chance that those other phones might happen upon a feature or design that can beat the 5C. If Apple stays with the high priced market, there are fewer competitors, AND they have more money from sales to keep pushing the envelope. To sell, they market features and an image, they do not market on price.
I think his model, if you can do it, works. Becoming a commodity is the death knell for your company because relentlessly cutting costs creates a cost-cutting atmosphere. That sort of atmosphere inhibits creativity by both providing a lesser product, but also by making the company less inclined to spend more on talent and research. And in this day and age, that leads to not only your manufacturing going to China, but also your whole corporate model eventually being duplicated by overseas competitors. Cheap is something they can do a lot better than those of us who give our workers a better standard of living.
I'm not going to say the 5C is a good or a bad idea, but I think that dropping price in and of itself, is not going to be as positive for a company as you might think. It can be a very short term sort of success.