To a point. The Nokia N82, for example, is not a huge, heavy phone, yet it manages to take quite a bit better pics than the iPhone. It's 5 megapixel too.
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It is not about the size, it is about the depth.
With a thin phone (iPhone, RAZR, or any of the thin ones), there is not enough depths to use good optics, or to have a larger sensor. The quality of the camera is universally bad.
Look at the higher MP phone cameras. The phones are thicker, but may not be bigger or heavier.
While it is true that 3G has higher capacity and the potential to actually save a carrier money in the long-term, in the short-term, it takes billions to actually BUILD OUT said 3G network.
If Apple starts selling iPhones at below cost, I think your analysis is very correct. The current $199 price doesn't seem necessarily below cost though.
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The 3G build out is a fixed cost, and has nothing to do with the iPhone per se. The have to invest these dollars anyway. The question is how the iPhone is paid for.
$199 is definitely below cost, without question. There is no way they are building this phone for less that. The full price of this phone (to carriers) will be in the range of $650-$850.
Have a look at AT&T's press release. They are losing 10-12 cents per share because of the new iPhone. It is an expensive new phone and Apple are charging more for it than the last, not least because the components cost more.
What did you expects?! did you expect to pay the same for 3G connection!!
This issue was already discussed here many times.
If you'd actually bothered to read the thread, you'll note what we're talking about whether this is an 'aggressive' price cut. It's clearly not. The price of the phone has gone up to both the customer and phone company.
WOW, quite a shift. I wonder if China Mobile's adamant resistance to the 'monthly kickback to Apple' subsidy model is part of it.
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I think every strong phone carrier (Vaodafone is a good example) would be against it. Now Apple are on the same page with upfront subsidies and everyone is happy.
But some ppl took it further, and were saying things like there was no point to 3G, EDGE was nearly as fast, EDGE has way better latency (not true, btw), etc. etc. Obviously, they were quite wrong about it.
I must admit, I thought the latency was higher on UMTS than GSM. As for the "no point in 3G", many remarks, including mine, were appending with the qualifier "...until AT&T gets a respectable 3G network up and running." Something they have done swimmingly over this past year.
Quote:
I'm just wondering if it can video-record now. Oh, and MMS?
I see no reaspn why this can't be done via a 3rd-party app as it's all software.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueLaw
?\tThey?re selling it as the phone of speed. But you?re still not going to able to download a song from the iTunes store via 3G. Why is that? Is it legal red tape? Because it?s making Apple look stupid.
There is some truth to that comment as downloading music over the carrier's network, which is something they also sell, may violate some agreement somewhere. You can google an article or two about it.
If you really want to do it there are currently simple hacks to trick the iPhone into thinking you are on a network. Jut use the direct IP address of your EDGE network and the iTunes STore app will function.
Quote:
?\tWhy isn?t there a file manager so I can save all the PDF?s and .jpeg?s I receive in the mail. What is Apple afraid of, that the filing cabinet won?t look Gay Chic?
Did they not mention a way of saving pictures from emails and a Library for storing and viewing all sorts of files like .DOC, .XLS, etc.?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrjoec123
Well, it's likely to go up because of the 3G speed. This is a given, though. This is not Apple doing something dastardly to its customers. If you get a 3G Blackberry, you're going to pay more for 3G, too.
I haven't been able to figure out a formula, but it might not go up. Remember that iPhone users are required to get the data plan, even if they use the non-contractual GoPhone plan, while other phones have it as an option. This means that high data usage people will ferintiely buy in on other phones, and those not as likely probably won't. Also, since the iPhone has WiFi which is faster and uses less power, people will use that whenever possible, and WiFI hotspots are growing, and I'm certain AT&T will offer it to iPhones for free again. Anyway, we shall see if this balances out the cost difference.
Quote:
Funny, how all of a sudden people want to talk about the "life of the contract" instead of the upfront costs. I remember some people getting shot down last year when they rightly pointed out that most $99 Windows mobile devices are actually more expensive than an iPhone over the life of the contract.
I'm not following, both your sentences pose the same side of the argument. Since Balmer's assertion that nobody is going to pay that much for a phone we've had comparisons of rate plans showing the iPhone is actually cheaper over 2 years.
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Originally Posted by SpamSandwich
Probably only answerable next month.
I'm pretty sure it has the same 620MHz ARM11 CPU that was reported last week. Probably the same amount of RAM, too, though I hope it's more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by merdhead
3G isn't going to cost the phone companies much more than 2G. 3G has more capacity and lower cost per byte, which already has a marginal cost very close to zero.
Considering the billions AT&T has put into HSDPA this year alone, we are going to need some facts and figures.
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Apple will lose money on a non-activated $100 phone, and with the level of unlocking they will lose lots of money. Either they will make locking unbreakable (difficult but ultimately possible) or they will abandon non-activation.
With 70 countries coming on board this year there won't be the international grey market sales were saw this past year. There also won't be any iPhones on Sprint or Verizon, for obvious reasons, and anyone on T-Mobile that wants to use a 3G iPhone will have to abandon T-Mobile to do it. There will be some that will prefer to stay on T-Mobile with an EDGE phone, but I think 3G is a much more powerful draw than deciding which carrier you hate the least.
Amen to that. AI was so bad during the keynote that I just went over to Engadget for the live coverage... no hiccups over there.
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I find macrumorslive.com to be pretty good in terms of their tech al least. Javascript updating, no refresh needed. Their coverage was pretty good with steaming photos and reasonable text. aAcWorld has more detailed postings but were less frequent.
It looks like iPhone 3G still doesn't support voice dialing. What's with that? Handsfree cell phone use while driving is becoming mandatory in most states and much of Europe, and dialing while driving is probably more dangerous than talking while driving. Nearly every cell phone has this feature. And every mac since about 1990 has supported voice recognition. This should have been a no-brainer on iPhone 1; there's no excuse for omitting it on the new one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by icfireball
That's simply a matter of a software update, which could happen at any time. And because of the iPhone accounting model, it would be free.
Hmmm. Yes, I suppose it could happen at any time, but it hasn't despite this being raised as an issue on the first model. Somebody said there's an app that supports this for jailbroken (jailbraked??) iPhones, but I'm not sure I want to go there. It's a curious omission by Apple.
With a thin phone (iPhone, RAZR, or any of the thin ones), there is not enough depths to use good optics, or to have a larger sensor. The quality of the camera is universally bad.
Look at the higher MP phone cameras. The phones are thicker, but may not be bigger or heavier.
Yah, but its a bit frustrating... the 'sweet spot', i.e. the thinnest phones with good camera performance, seems to be 15-17mm: the N82, Viewty, K850i, etc. A bit thicker than the iPhone, but still not what you'd call a 'thick' phone.
I'd be sweet to see an iPhone variant that was more multimedia-centered, and dared to be a touch thicker. And, as a bonus, lots more room for a bigger battery.
If you'd actually bothered to read the thread, you'll note what we're talking about whether this is an 'aggressive' price cut. It's clearly not. The price of the phone has gone up to both the customer and phone company.
If a 50% price cut is not aggressive then I don't know what else is!! Beside, Lets talk when something official comes out from AT&T or Apple regarding the $10 extra.
But you can still pick one up at an Apple store with no activation or pushy AT&T sales people. The lack of an online option is probably to drive customers to Apple stores to see macs as well, and to deal with the incredible demand.
While the lack of online sales is yet to be confirmed (because it isn't actually released yet), it would be an idiotic move for Apple not to have them.
I live in Vancouver Canada, which is the third largest metropolitan area in the country and 20 minutes from the USA border, but there is a single tiny little apple store in a mall downtown. A month ago there wasn't even that. The next nearest store is thousands of miles away!
To not sell the iPhone online would mean throwing potential sales out the window, big-time.
Even if they sell it in Rogers stores, there are still tens of thousands of potential customers that would have to drive for a whole day just to find one of those in my province alone. You can say pretty much the same things about the rest of Canada, Australia, South America, etc.
Heck in Vancouver, having it for sale in a Rogers store would probably mean *decreased* sales. Rogers has a rep for being worse than AT&T for customer service and lying to and strong-arming the customers. Those guys are truly "anti-customer" and the dishonesty will rub off on Apple if they aren't careful.
The 3G build out is a fixed cost, and has nothing to do with the iPhone per se. The have to invest these dollars anyway. The question is how the iPhone is paid for.
ATT really doesn't HAVE to do anything... they certainly can, and would, restrict their 3G network's build-out only to the most heavily populated urban areas if it looked like the thing will be a huge money-loser for them. It's a big investment for them, they have to recoup costs somehow. That's why I'm complaining less about the data plan increase than most.
Quote:
$199 is definitely below cost, without question. There is no way they are building this phone for less that. The full price of this phone (to carriers) will be in the range of $650-$850.
That high? I dunno. The early teardowns I saw for the iPhone (a year ago) indicated a materials cost of around $215... and many of the parts have declined in price since then. There are some better parts in the 3G iPhone, even so, 3G chipsets are not that terribly expensive. If the cost to carriers is $650-800, the carriers are getting soaked.
Quote:
Have a look at AT&T's press release. They are losing 10-12 cents per share because of the new iPhone. It is an expensive new phone and Apple are charging more for it than the last, not least because the components cost more.
Well, ATT is desperate for the iPhone too, let's not forget. They need it badly because it helps ATT in so many areas where they're not strong: data ARPU, postpaid contract sign-ups (about half of ATT's net adds come from prepay, actually), overall ARPU, churn.
So if ATT is getting soaked by Apple on this, it's understandable why. And Steve is ever so happy to do it, too.
I hope they don't keep dropping the price at this rate. My novel in which the iPhone plays a bit part relies on one being a slightly pricey purchase.
Anyway it will be great to have them in Australia. It will be an option for me once I am ready to retire my low-end Nokia. I never saw the point of fancier phones when they were complicated to use.
One thing I am not sure I like: auto-switching between networking modes. In some parts of the world these have radically different cost structures and in that case being able to choose e.g. to stick with WiFi even if it didn't have the best signal strength may be better. But it will depend on the details of the plan. Optus here is taking (refundable) preorder deposits without any details of plans; Vodafone is on Apple's web site but has nothing about iPhone on their site. Good that there's competition from day 1.
If a 50% price cut is not aggressive then I don't know what else is!! Beside, Lets talk when something official comes out from AT&T or Apple regarding the $10 extra.
Wow. You just don't get it. Read the discussion. It's all there. The price has gone up it's official. Why do you bother coming to this forum if you don't read the posts, or at least the posts of the person you're replying to. It doesn't make you look good.
Comments
I think it's better than two different materials for the back.
I don't know about anyone else, but the site was very unstable today. And the post disorder gremlin has come back too.
Yeah. I couldn't even get to the live coverage.
I wrote to Kasper about it.
To a point. The Nokia N82, for example, is not a huge, heavy phone, yet it manages to take quite a bit better pics than the iPhone. It's 5 megapixel too.
.
It is not about the size, it is about the depth.
With a thin phone (iPhone, RAZR, or any of the thin ones), there is not enough depths to use good optics, or to have a larger sensor. The quality of the camera is universally bad.
Look at the higher MP phone cameras. The phones are thicker, but may not be bigger or heavier.
While it is true that 3G has higher capacity and the potential to actually save a carrier money in the long-term, in the short-term, it takes billions to actually BUILD OUT said 3G network.
If Apple starts selling iPhones at below cost, I think your analysis is very correct. The current $199 price doesn't seem necessarily below cost though.
.
The 3G build out is a fixed cost, and has nothing to do with the iPhone per se. The have to invest these dollars anyway. The question is how the iPhone is paid for.
$199 is definitely below cost, without question. There is no way they are building this phone for less that. The full price of this phone (to carriers) will be in the range of $650-$850.
Have a look at AT&T's press release. They are losing 10-12 cents per share because of the new iPhone. It is an expensive new phone and Apple are charging more for it than the last, not least because the components cost more.
What did you expects?! did you expect to pay the same for 3G connection!!
This issue was already discussed here many times.
If you'd actually bothered to read the thread, you'll note what we're talking about whether this is an 'aggressive' price cut. It's clearly not. The price of the phone has gone up to both the customer and phone company.
What did you expects?! did you expect to pay the same for 3G connection!!
This issue was already discussed here many times.
The 3G conneciton on my Moto Razr V3xx costs $20/mo unlimited. Not sure how they justify the extra $10.
WOW, quite a shift. I wonder if China Mobile's adamant resistance to the 'monthly kickback to Apple' subsidy model is part of it.
.
I think every strong phone carrier (Vaodafone is a good example) would be against it. Now Apple are on the same page with upfront subsidies and everyone is happy.
Now where's the voice recorder application Steve said would be included when he first introduced the iPhone? Still waiting, Steve!
But some ppl took it further, and were saying things like there was no point to 3G, EDGE was nearly as fast, EDGE has way better latency (not true, btw), etc. etc. Obviously, they were quite wrong about it.
I must admit, I thought the latency was higher on UMTS than GSM. As for the "no point in 3G", many remarks, including mine, were appending with the qualifier "...until AT&T gets a respectable 3G network up and running." Something they have done swimmingly over this past year.
I'm just wondering if it can video-record now. Oh, and MMS?
I see no reaspn why this can't be done via a 3rd-party app as it's all software.
?\tThey?re selling it as the phone of speed. But you?re still not going to able to download a song from the iTunes store via 3G. Why is that? Is it legal red tape? Because it?s making Apple look stupid.
There is some truth to that comment as downloading music over the carrier's network, which is something they also sell, may violate some agreement somewhere. You can google an article or two about it.
If you really want to do it there are currently simple hacks to trick the iPhone into thinking you are on a network. Jut use the direct IP address of your EDGE network and the iTunes STore app will function.
?\tWhy isn?t there a file manager so I can save all the PDF?s and .jpeg?s I receive in the mail. What is Apple afraid of, that the filing cabinet won?t look Gay Chic?
Did they not mention a way of saving pictures from emails and a Library for storing and viewing all sorts of files like .DOC, .XLS, etc.?
Well, it's likely to go up because of the 3G speed. This is a given, though. This is not Apple doing something dastardly to its customers. If you get a 3G Blackberry, you're going to pay more for 3G, too.
I haven't been able to figure out a formula, but it might not go up. Remember that iPhone users are required to get the data plan, even if they use the non-contractual GoPhone plan, while other phones have it as an option. This means that high data usage people will ferintiely buy in on other phones, and those not as likely probably won't. Also, since the iPhone has WiFi which is faster and uses less power, people will use that whenever possible, and WiFI hotspots are growing, and I'm certain AT&T will offer it to iPhones for free again. Anyway, we shall see if this balances out the cost difference.
Funny, how all of a sudden people want to talk about the "life of the contract" instead of the upfront costs. I remember some people getting shot down last year when they rightly pointed out that most $99 Windows mobile devices are actually more expensive than an iPhone over the life of the contract.
I'm not following, both your sentences pose the same side of the argument. Since Balmer's assertion that nobody is going to pay that much for a phone we've had comparisons of rate plans showing the iPhone is actually cheaper over 2 years.
Probably only answerable next month.
I'm pretty sure it has the same 620MHz ARM11 CPU that was reported last week. Probably the same amount of RAM, too, though I hope it's more.
3G isn't going to cost the phone companies much more than 2G. 3G has more capacity and lower cost per byte, which already has a marginal cost very close to zero.
Considering the billions AT&T has put into HSDPA this year alone, we are going to need some facts and figures.
Apple will lose money on a non-activated $100 phone, and with the level of unlocking they will lose lots of money. Either they will make locking unbreakable (difficult but ultimately possible) or they will abandon non-activation.
With 70 countries coming on board this year there won't be the international grey market sales were saw this past year. There also won't be any iPhones on Sprint or Verizon, for obvious reasons, and anyone on T-Mobile that wants to use a 3G iPhone will have to abandon T-Mobile to do it. There will be some that will prefer to stay on T-Mobile with an EDGE phone, but I think 3G is a much more powerful draw than deciding which carrier you hate the least.
Amen to that. AI was so bad during the keynote that I just went over to Engadget for the live coverage... no hiccups over there.
.
I find macrumorslive.com to be pretty good in terms of their tech al least. Javascript updating, no refresh needed. Their coverage was pretty good with steaming photos and reasonable text. aAcWorld has more detailed postings but were less frequent.
It looks like iPhone 3G still doesn't support voice dialing. What's with that? Handsfree cell phone use while driving is becoming mandatory in most states and much of Europe, and dialing while driving is probably more dangerous than talking while driving. Nearly every cell phone has this feature. And every mac since about 1990 has supported voice recognition. This should have been a no-brainer on iPhone 1; there's no excuse for omitting it on the new one.
That's simply a matter of a software update, which could happen at any time. And because of the iPhone accounting model, it would be free.
Hmmm. Yes, I suppose it could happen at any time, but it hasn't despite this being raised as an issue on the first model. Somebody said there's an app that supports this for jailbroken (jailbraked??) iPhones, but I'm not sure I want to go there. It's a curious omission by Apple.
It is not about the size, it is about the depth.
With a thin phone (iPhone, RAZR, or any of the thin ones), there is not enough depths to use good optics, or to have a larger sensor. The quality of the camera is universally bad.
Look at the higher MP phone cameras. The phones are thicker, but may not be bigger or heavier.
Yah, but its a bit frustrating... the 'sweet spot', i.e. the thinnest phones with good camera performance, seems to be 15-17mm: the N82, Viewty, K850i, etc. A bit thicker than the iPhone, but still not what you'd call a 'thick' phone.
I'd be sweet to see an iPhone variant that was more multimedia-centered, and dared to be a touch thicker. And, as a bonus, lots more room for a bigger battery.
.
If you'd actually bothered to read the thread, you'll note what we're talking about whether this is an 'aggressive' price cut. It's clearly not. The price of the phone has gone up to both the customer and phone company.
If a 50% price cut is not aggressive then I don't know what else is!! Beside, Lets talk when something official comes out from AT&T or Apple regarding the $10 extra.
Another "joke post"?
Ahhh. . . . now I understand, this is how you've managed to get 13000+ "comments"
But you can still pick one up at an Apple store with no activation or pushy AT&T sales people. The lack of an online option is probably to drive customers to Apple stores to see macs as well, and to deal with the incredible demand.
While the lack of online sales is yet to be confirmed (because it isn't actually released yet), it would be an idiotic move for Apple not to have them.
I live in Vancouver Canada, which is the third largest metropolitan area in the country and 20 minutes from the USA border, but there is a single tiny little apple store in a mall downtown. A month ago there wasn't even that. The next nearest store is thousands of miles away!
To not sell the iPhone online would mean throwing potential sales out the window, big-time.
Even if they sell it in Rogers stores, there are still tens of thousands of potential customers that would have to drive for a whole day just to find one of those in my province alone. You can say pretty much the same things about the rest of Canada, Australia, South America, etc.
Heck in Vancouver, having it for sale in a Rogers store would probably mean *decreased* sales. Rogers has a rep for being worse than AT&T for customer service and lying to and strong-arming the customers. Those guys are truly "anti-customer" and the dishonesty will rub off on Apple if they aren't careful.
And at 2Mpx it takes a hell of a lot better picture than my Razr.
5MP on mobile phones is becoming normal here in Japan.
The 3G build out is a fixed cost, and has nothing to do with the iPhone per se. The have to invest these dollars anyway. The question is how the iPhone is paid for.
ATT really doesn't HAVE to do anything... they certainly can, and would, restrict their 3G network's build-out only to the most heavily populated urban areas if it looked like the thing will be a huge money-loser for them. It's a big investment for them, they have to recoup costs somehow. That's why I'm complaining less about the data plan increase than most.
$199 is definitely below cost, without question. There is no way they are building this phone for less that. The full price of this phone (to carriers) will be in the range of $650-$850.
That high? I dunno. The early teardowns I saw for the iPhone (a year ago) indicated a materials cost of around $215... and many of the parts have declined in price since then. There are some better parts in the 3G iPhone, even so, 3G chipsets are not that terribly expensive. If the cost to carriers is $650-800, the carriers are getting soaked.
Have a look at AT&T's press release. They are losing 10-12 cents per share because of the new iPhone. It is an expensive new phone and Apple are charging more for it than the last, not least because the components cost more.
Well, ATT is desperate for the iPhone too, let's not forget. They need it badly because it helps ATT in so many areas where they're not strong: data ARPU, postpaid contract sign-ups (about half of ATT's net adds come from prepay, actually), overall ARPU, churn.
So if ATT is getting soaked by Apple on this, it's understandable why. And Steve is ever so happy to do it, too.
.
Anyway it will be great to have them in Australia. It will be an option for me once I am ready to retire my low-end Nokia. I never saw the point of fancier phones when they were complicated to use.
One thing I am not sure I like: auto-switching between networking modes. In some parts of the world these have radically different cost structures and in that case being able to choose e.g. to stick with WiFi even if it didn't have the best signal strength may be better. But it will depend on the details of the plan. Optus here is taking (refundable) preorder deposits without any details of plans; Vodafone is on Apple's web site but has nothing about iPhone on their site. Good that there's competition from day 1.
Yeah. I couldn't even get to the live coverage.
I wrote to Kasper about it.
The best coverage was both twitlive.tv and Cali Lewis live audio coverage (combined). I had an up to the minute sense of what was happening.
I think the coming days should be kind, unless the overall economic situation/oil prices tank stocks in general, hard.
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If a 50% price cut is not aggressive then I don't know what else is!! Beside, Lets talk when something official comes out from AT&T or Apple regarding the $10 extra.
Wow. You just don't get it. Read the discussion. It's all there. The price has gone up it's official. Why do you bother coming to this forum if you don't read the posts, or at least the posts of the person you're replying to. It doesn't make you look good.