Free Runner price vs iphone 3G price

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:56:44 -0700 ian douglas <ian.douglas at iandouglas.com>
babbled:

> Robert Taylor wrote:
> > You pay through the nose for it because you HAVETO sign up for a 2 year 
> > contract minimum.
> 
> Granted, the Apple and AT&T partnership greatly subsidizes the cost, 
> because of the $960 ($40/mo unlimited data plan for 2 yrs) to $2400 
> ($100/mo unlimited voice/data for 2 yrs) that you'd spend with AT&T also 
> helps cover the hidden cost of the hardware.
> 
> And while I personally don't care much for the iPhone, you also have to 
> sign up for a voice/data plan to use the Freerunner... You're still 
> paying the $960-$2400 over two years, but there's not offset of cost of 
> the hardware to the consumer. The monthly fees you pay that doesn't pay 
> for the actual use of the cell network is 100% profit to AT&T instead of 
> going to Apple to help pay for the hardware.
> 
> Same with TMobile, and I imagine any other carrier who offsets the price 
> of their phones to lock you into a contract.
> 
> Just my $0.02.
> 
> What you're paying the extra money for, for the Freerunner, is the 
> freedom of doing whatever you want with your phone. Sure, the iPhone has 
> their SDK released, but all applications still have to go through Apple 
> to operate on your phone -- I don't know if the SDK even allows you to 
> build an application just for your own iPhone to test it. Also, their 
> mobile OS is closed source -- you have no access to hack or tweak it to 
> do *exactly* what you want it to. You can't change the applications that 
> come with the phone, you can't do a lot of things. Sure, they have lots 
> of eye candy and some solid-looking applications, but once we as a 
> community port applications to the Freerunner hardware to run on 
> OpenMoko, we'll be leaps and bounds ahead of the iPhone software.
> 
> That, to me, is worth the extra purchase price.

this is mostly thanks to the fact that carriers in the usa have no options of
"byo" (bring your own) handset. they always subsidise something and thus have
it built into their pricing model. other carriers elsewhere in the world have
different prices if all you do is buy a sim card... :)


-- 
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <raster at openmoko.org>