comparing Apples and Oranges $199 iPhone Freerunner GTA02

Lally Singh lally.singh at gmail.com
Tue Jun 10 14:16:05 CEST 2008


On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 6:58 AM, Kalle Happonen <kalle.happonen at iki.fi> wrote:
> arne anka wrote:
>>> It's 8GB not 4 and it's $199 with a 2yr contract.  Regular retail prices
>>> have yet to be announced.
>>>
>>
>> as i understand, 199 is apple's price -- providers may subsidise the
>> iphone, too.
>>
> No, 199$ is a operator subsidised price.
>
> from
> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/the-cost-of-the-199-iphone-10-more-per-month-for-data/
>
> "According to a press release from AT&T, the carrier will no longer give
> a portion of monthly usage fees to Apple. Instead carriers will pay
> Apple a subsidy for each phone sold, in order to bring the price from
> $399 down to $199 for the 8 Gigabyte model."
>
> later in the same
> "Now Apple will get its money, say $500, up front and it no longer has
> to police what people do with them."
> which I guess is a fair estimate.
>
> What this means is of course significantly higher monthly fees.

Nope, the prices to consumers are staying the same as before.
Instead, AT&T's hoping to push more regular phone users into the
smartphone market.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9963999-7.html

<comment related-to-parent-poster="no">
Sheesh, what's with all the hate?  I swear the open source community
should sometimes just be called "the hater's club."

Apple makes some good products, and they're no angels, but a balanced
view of their stuff doesn't show them to be demons, either.  For a
good number of people, their machines make a lot of sense.  For
others, they don't try to shove it down their throats (e.g. note the
way that apple's ignored the enterprise since Jobs took back over).

The only thing unusual about apple is all the news time they get.
Three reasons:
1. Journalists fall into the category of users who macs serve well.
2. Steve Jobs does a great job at marketing.
3. Microsoft is too risk-averse to making the big technology changes
that Apple does. (e.g. Win32 should've been castrated 10 years ago.
The already cleaned-up Carbon's already getting killed. )  They'll
look to see what works on other platforms (including, most
importantly, Apple) and copy it later -- making Apple's announcements
relevant to the much larger microsoft customer base.
</comment>

I donno about y'all, but even with all my hesitations about the OM
phone (size, cpu) compared to the new iPhone, I find myself with a
good need to hack that only the OM can satisfy.  And that's despite my
distinct interest in the mobile space, which will clearly be
frontlined by the iPhone for quite some time.

-- 
H. Lally Singh
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science
Virginia Tech




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