Sure, but that doesn't work with consumers. People in general do not "see" or "feel" monthly payments like they do initial purchace payments. In the US, if people had to pay the whole amount Apple gets over the life of a 2 year contract to Apple in a lump sum they would not do it--even if the monthly payments were lower and it all worked out the same in the end.
I assume Chinese consumers are similar to American ones in this respect.
Besides, I always assumed the $1000 unlocked phones in Europe were more for regulatory reasons--are many people going to buy those?
The rich will buy anything. The rest will buy when they need or want it bad enough like everyone else
i agree, the chinese that have the $$$/??? do care about apple... it's just apple has been slow to get into the chinese market and a lot of macs are grey imports...
apple stores and a chinese apple online store and iTS would be well received...
beijing and shanghai apple dealers but their not apple owned, in my opinion a mistake... aple should cater to the new computer generation ASAP!
The rich will buy anything. The rest will buy when they need or want it bad enough like everyone else
in germany unlocked iphones are ?999, that roughly $1480 @ the current exchange rate... but that price was made by t-mobile, not apple!
i think a fair unlocked price is around ?700.... the ?1000 is a reaction to vodafone sueing t-mobile for access to iphones!
and debitel, an airtime reseller in the german cell market, offers a ?600 rebate for anyone wanting the iphone with their contract... but that's with a 24 months contract...
Sure, but that doesn't work with consumers. People in general do not "see" or "feel" monthly payments like they do initial purchace payments. In the US, if people had to pay the whole amount Apple gets over the life of a 2 year contract to Apple in a lump sum they would not do it--even if the monthly payments were lower and it all worked out the same in the end.
I assume Chinese consumers are similar to American ones in this respect.
Besides, I always assumed the $1000 unlocked phones in Europe were more for regulatory reasons--are many people going to buy those?
spiegel.de made a calculation with the locked and unlocked prices...
and if you get a similar contract, but without the EDGE and wifi flat rate t-mobile offers, you save over 24 months, but if you want to use the iphone as intended, with daily heavy internet use, then you really need the t-mobile contract! wifi hotspots from t-mobile are pretty common in public places like bars and restaurants and hotels in germany, as in most airports and train station, and some ICE high speed trains of t-mobile wifi coverage, serviced by up to 6 HSDPA/HUSPA links... i think the t-mobile wifi flatrate itself is worth ?20 a month, and without it you will end up paying ?20 a day if you connect to them...
i got that t-mobile flat rate on my t-home ADSL2+ account for ?15/month, and i use it at least 2h a day....
in germany unlocked iphones are €999, that roughly $1480 @ the current exchange rate... but that price was made by t-mobile, not apple!
i think a fair unlocked price is around €700.... the €1000 is a reaction to vodafone sueing t-mobile for access to iphones!
and debitel, an airtime reseller in the german cell market, offers a €600 rebate for anyone wanting the iphone with their contract... but that's with a 24 months contract...
I'm glad so many of the comments show the viewers have a brain. The site is helpful amd infomative . Thank you Kasper
And I wouldn't assume Chinese customers to be the same as Americans. Asians in general seem to take a much more long-term view of the world. I would expect a larger percentage of them to be willing to save up for an expensive item. They might even prefer it over a low up-front cost plus higher monthly payments.
Y'know, as I was writing it I was going to say something about "human nature" and I decided I might be pushing it so I changed it to "I assume that." I readily agree that could be a misguided assumption.
But still. $1000 for a phone? It is amazing to me that Apple has us agreeing that this is a "fair price" for just the phone!!!
Here in the USA, some of that money is being beat out of at&t--as a consumer you pay the cost of the phone up front and the monthly fees are reasonable compared to what you would pay for similar service and high data usage with any phone. That money that Apple gets doesn't seem like it is coming out of our pockets.
If you buy an unlocked phone for $1000 or anything like it and then have to pay the service provider full price on top of it--Damn--I just don't get it for anyone but the people who have so much money they don't know what to do with it!!
[Edit: unless you can get a deal like that Debitel one--I haven't looked into that much because it doesn't apply to me]
But still. $1000 for a phone? It is amazing to me that Apple has us agreeing that this is a "fair price" for just the phone!!!
Don't forget that other smartphones with smaller screens and less storage have recently sold unlocked for over $1000. The Nokia N95 was selling for $800, and even higher before that I believe. Expensive phones aren't an Apple invention
But still. $1000 for a phone? It is amazing to me that Apple has us agreeing that this is a "fair price" for just the phone!!!
I wish everybody would read my posts on other threads, so I don't have to repeat myself all over the place.
Apple is not forcing people to pay $1000 for an iPhone. Their European price is ?400 (about $590). The $1000 number being tossed about is to buy an unlocked version.
Unlocked phones always cost a lot more than locked versions. Go to web sites for major US carriers, like AT&T and Verizon and look up the prices for locked smartphones with contracts. Now Google for unlocked versions of the same phones. You'll find that they cost 125-350% more than the locked version. The reason they cost less than the unlocked iPhone is simply due to the fact that the locked versions also cost a lot less. (Locked smartphones typically sell for $150-250, vs. $400 for the iPhone.)
If you apply these percentages to the iPhone's locked European price, you get an expected price of ?900-1800 (about $1300-2600). Given the fact that they are actually selling for ?750 (about $1100) in France and ?1000 (about $1500) in Germany, that tells me that it's not nearly as bad a deal as your gut-feeling reaction would say.
Now, it is perfectly fine to argue that the iPhone's ?400 base price is too high, or that all manufacturers are gouging customers with huge markups for unlocked phones, but that's a much broader subject, and is one that nobody here has enough information to intelligently argue.
and the prices in europe are more or less 1:1 $ to €... not in conversion, but how real prices are when you go out to buy something...
the $1.50 for €1.00 is just whats going on right now interms of exchange rates...
$399 and €399 are fair prices in terms of markets...
a macdonalds menu is around €4.50 to €5 in germany...
a comparable mcdonalds menu is abou the same in the US in $...
and don't forget that US prices are posted without tax! german sales tax is 19%, UK is 16.5% i think, not a 100% sure... the $399 is without state sales tax! that the US sales tax is lower is another thing, varying from 0% to 8.25%... but those taxes are never reflected unless you really get a receipt with the full amount!
The phone-buying model in China and India is somewhat different from that in the US, Europe, Japan etc. People are perfectly happy to plonk down for the full cost of the handset up front (often much lower than in the West, because of numbers sold), and have multiple SIMs from multiple providers. See, e.g.,: http://online.wsj.com/public/article...695607240.html (you do not need a subscription anymore to view wsj.com!).
A contract with one of the service providers might actually be a silly way for Apple to try to enter those two markets.
(I doubt, however, that handsets costing more than $750 or so will sell in those markets, except as a super-rich niche product).
Those of you who think China would not care about the iPhone missed this thread.
In one Chinese netizen's words: "It's like the whole country has gone iPhone, all my friends have become iPhoners." The iPhone is readily available in computer superstores in most large Chinese cities.
But maybe Japan and Taiwan will be a better choice. Macs in Japan has about 50% of marketshare. and, I heard that most of the chinese companies which earns a lot of $$ are all Taiwanese. Even the biggest company of tecnology in ChinaPRC are from TaiwanROC. Remember, iPhone is mounted by a Taiwanese company.
The Chinese doesn't care if they have an "REAL" iPhone!~
the unlocked iphones in france and germany are much more expensive than the locked ones...
It seems to me that is should be obvious by now that Apple's estimation of the "full" price* of the locked-in phone actually includes the subsidies brought in by the revenue-sharing dollars coming in from Apple's partners. In situations where there is no revenue-sharing (ie, contract-free, SIM-unlocked phones), the subsidy is gone, so the difference is recovered by charging the true full price they expected to realize from the phone in one up-front charge. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
*(That's the price -- the income they expect to bring as a result of selling the phone. Not the cost -- the expenses they have to cover when manufacturing the phone)
Quote:
and the other GSM providers don't have the EDGE coverage nor the visual voicemail infrastructure in place to accommodate the iphones owners!
Lacklustre EDGE coverage, at least, cannot possibly be construed in any way as being Apple's fault.
Depending on the technical details behind the Visual Voicemail delivery mechanism (I don't know about the state of any patents and whatnot that might impede its acceptance) it's entirely possible that Apple doesn't have any say in the timetable for other carriers introducing that feature either.
I think it's good that China says no to revenue sharing. Obviously it's not allowed by chinese law, and I think it's pretty harsh by Apple to go down this line to begin with. They're making money like SICK on these deals... so sick they should give away iPhones for free. It's crazy that they really pulled it off. It shows us where Apple stands today, amazing. But Apple is getting too cocky for its own good I think. It might hit back soon if they don't soften up and care about "the crazy ones" again. Now that an unlocked iPhone costs more than a MacBook it kind of sets things in perspective. I think Apple is getting to the point where they are starting to misuse their position.
I see this as an example of the increasingly common "Apple is wrong so the world must be crazy" line of thinking.
That is, Apple keeps selling lots of stuff at prices some parties find excessive, and since the answer can't be "Apple is charging what people are willing to pay", then it must be the result of some kind of mass psychosis, or the RDF, or, in the case of the deals Apple has made with cell carriers, some kind of shake-down.
Presumably Jobs threatened those companies with physical harm if they didn't agree to his insane, money grubbing terms, and at some point, when the powerful drugs wear off, they'll all realize that the iPhone sucks and they got played as fools.
As will the people buying iPhones, who are, apparently, largely stupid rich people, fan boys, clueless trend chasers, the easily duped, the easily hypnotized, and hapless newbies, who don't understand that they can buy other phones that do more for less. It's just a shame there are so many of them.
Oh, and, of course, loyal Apple customers that are required to buy the iPhone at whatever price Apple cares to charge, and will hate every minute of their Apple using life from now on.
Damn you, Apple, your sinister web of mind control must be broken.
In situations where there is no revenue-sharing (ie, contract-free, SIM-unlocked phones), the subsidy is gone, so the difference is recovered by charging the true full price they expected to realize from the phone in one up-front charge. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
The only way I can think of justifying the subsidy is Apple's continued development of the iPhone's OS and apps. Apple will supply updates to iPhone users for no additional charge. But that does not mean that Apple intended to absorb the cost of that continued development.
Quote:
The Chinese doesn't care if they have an "REAL" iPhone!~
Do you have any proof of this besides your own opinion?
Comments
Sure, but that doesn't work with consumers. People in general do not "see" or "feel" monthly payments like they do initial purchace payments. In the US, if people had to pay the whole amount Apple gets over the life of a 2 year contract to Apple in a lump sum they would not do it--even if the monthly payments were lower and it all worked out the same in the end.
I assume Chinese consumers are similar to American ones in this respect.
Besides, I always assumed the $1000 unlocked phones in Europe were more for regulatory reasons--are many people going to buy those?
The rich will buy anything. The rest will buy when they need or want it bad enough like everyone else
WRONG
i agree, the chinese that have the $$$/??? do care about apple... it's just apple has been slow to get into the chinese market and a lot of macs are grey imports...
apple stores and a chinese apple online store and iTS would be well received...
beijing and shanghai apple dealers but their not apple owned, in my opinion a mistake... aple should cater to the new computer generation ASAP!
The rich will buy anything. The rest will buy when they need or want it bad enough like everyone else
in germany unlocked iphones are ?999, that roughly $1480 @ the current exchange rate... but that price was made by t-mobile, not apple!
i think a fair unlocked price is around ?700.... the ?1000 is a reaction to vodafone sueing t-mobile for access to iphones!
and debitel, an airtime reseller in the german cell market, offers a ?600 rebate for anyone wanting the iphone with their contract... but that's with a 24 months contract...
Sure, but that doesn't work with consumers. People in general do not "see" or "feel" monthly payments like they do initial purchace payments. In the US, if people had to pay the whole amount Apple gets over the life of a 2 year contract to Apple in a lump sum they would not do it--even if the monthly payments were lower and it all worked out the same in the end.
I assume Chinese consumers are similar to American ones in this respect.
Besides, I always assumed the $1000 unlocked phones in Europe were more for regulatory reasons--are many people going to buy those?
spiegel.de made a calculation with the locked and unlocked prices...
and if you get a similar contract, but without the EDGE and wifi flat rate t-mobile offers, you save over 24 months, but if you want to use the iphone as intended, with daily heavy internet use, then you really need the t-mobile contract! wifi hotspots from t-mobile are pretty common in public places like bars and restaurants and hotels in germany, as in most airports and train station, and some ICE high speed trains of t-mobile wifi coverage, serviced by up to 6 HSDPA/HUSPA links... i think the t-mobile wifi flatrate itself is worth ?20 a month, and without it you will end up paying ?20 a day if you connect to them...
i got that t-mobile flat rate on my t-home ADSL2+ account for ?15/month, and i use it at least 2h a day....
in germany unlocked iphones are €999, that roughly $1480 @ the current exchange rate... but that price was made by t-mobile, not apple!
i think a fair unlocked price is around €700.... the €1000 is a reaction to vodafone sueing t-mobile for access to iphones!
and debitel, an airtime reseller in the german cell market, offers a €600 rebate for anyone wanting the iphone with their contract... but that's with a 24 months contract...
I'm glad so many of the comments show the viewers have a brain. The site is helpful amd infomative . Thank you Kasper
.
And I wouldn't assume Chinese customers to be the same as Americans. Asians in general seem to take a much more long-term view of the world. I would expect a larger percentage of them to be willing to save up for an expensive item. They might even prefer it over a low up-front cost plus higher monthly payments.
Y'know, as I was writing it I was going to say something about "human nature" and I decided I might be pushing it so I changed it to "I assume that." I readily agree that could be a misguided assumption.
But still. $1000 for a phone? It is amazing to me that Apple has us agreeing that this is a "fair price" for just the phone!!!
Here in the USA, some of that money is being beat out of at&t--as a consumer you pay the cost of the phone up front and the monthly fees are reasonable compared to what you would pay for similar service and high data usage with any phone. That money that Apple gets doesn't seem like it is coming out of our pockets.
If you buy an unlocked phone for $1000 or anything like it and then have to pay the service provider full price on top of it--Damn--I just don't get it for anyone but the people who have so much money they don't know what to do with it!!
[Edit: unless you can get a deal like that Debitel one--I haven't looked into that much because it doesn't apply to me]
But still. $1000 for a phone? It is amazing to me that Apple has us agreeing that this is a "fair price" for just the phone!!!
Don't forget that other smartphones with smaller screens and less storage have recently sold unlocked for over $1000. The Nokia N95 was selling for $800, and even higher before that I believe. Expensive phones aren't an Apple invention
But still. $1000 for a phone? It is amazing to me that Apple has us agreeing that this is a "fair price" for just the phone!!!
I wish everybody would read my posts on other threads, so I don't have to repeat myself all over the place.
Apple is not forcing people to pay $1000 for an iPhone. Their European price is ?400 (about $590). The $1000 number being tossed about is to buy an unlocked version.
Unlocked phones always cost a lot more than locked versions. Go to web sites for major US carriers, like AT&T and Verizon and look up the prices for locked smartphones with contracts. Now Google for unlocked versions of the same phones. You'll find that they cost 125-350% more than the locked version. The reason they cost less than the unlocked iPhone is simply due to the fact that the locked versions also cost a lot less. (Locked smartphones typically sell for $150-250, vs. $400 for the iPhone.)
If you apply these percentages to the iPhone's locked European price, you get an expected price of ?900-1800 (about $1300-2600). Given the fact that they are actually selling for ?750 (about $1100) in France and ?1000 (about $1500) in Germany, that tells me that it's not nearly as bad a deal as your gut-feeling reaction would say.
Now, it is perfectly fine to argue that the iPhone's ?400 base price is too high, or that all manufacturers are gouging customers with huge markups for unlocked phones, but that's a much broader subject, and is one that nobody here has enough information to intelligently argue.
and the prices in europe are more or less 1:1 $ to €... not in conversion, but how real prices are when you go out to buy something...
the $1.50 for €1.00 is just whats going on right now interms of exchange rates...
$399 and €399 are fair prices in terms of markets...
a macdonalds menu is around €4.50 to €5 in germany...
a comparable mcdonalds menu is abou the same in the US in $...
and don't forget that US prices are posted without tax! german sales tax is 19%, UK is 16.5% i think, not a 100% sure... the $399 is without state sales tax! that the US sales tax is lower is another thing, varying from 0% to 8.25%... but those taxes are never reflected unless you really get a receipt with the full amount!
A contract with one of the service providers might actually be a silly way for Apple to try to enter those two markets.
(I doubt, however, that handsets costing more than $750 or so will sell in those markets, except as a super-rich niche product).
I've never really heard of Apple being flexible in their business dealings.
Let us praise the Lord for that.
(I doubt, however, that handsets costing more than $750 or so will sell in those markets, except as a super-rich niche product).
A niche product in China is a massive market by any other country's standards.
WRONG
No, I've been there.
In one Chinese netizen's words: "It's like the whole country has gone iPhone, all my friends have become iPhoners." The iPhone is readily available in computer superstores in most large Chinese cities.
China's New 'Love Craze' — Black Market iPhones
The Chinese doesn't care if they have an "REAL" iPhone!~
the unlocked iphones in france and germany are much more expensive than the locked ones...
It seems to me that is should be obvious by now that Apple's estimation of the "full" price* of the locked-in phone actually includes the subsidies brought in by the revenue-sharing dollars coming in from Apple's partners. In situations where there is no revenue-sharing (ie, contract-free, SIM-unlocked phones), the subsidy is gone, so the difference is recovered by charging the true full price they expected to realize from the phone in one up-front charge. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
*(That's the price -- the income they expect to bring as a result of selling the phone. Not the cost -- the expenses they have to cover when manufacturing the phone)
and the other GSM providers don't have the EDGE coverage nor the visual voicemail infrastructure in place to accommodate the iphones owners!
Lacklustre EDGE coverage, at least, cannot possibly be construed in any way as being Apple's fault.
Depending on the technical details behind the Visual Voicemail delivery mechanism (I don't know about the state of any patents and whatnot that might impede its acceptance) it's entirely possible that Apple doesn't have any say in the timetable for other carriers introducing that feature either.
I think it's good that China says no to revenue sharing. Obviously it's not allowed by chinese law, and I think it's pretty harsh by Apple to go down this line to begin with. They're making money like SICK on these deals... so sick they should give away iPhones for free. It's crazy that they really pulled it off. It shows us where Apple stands today, amazing. But Apple is getting too cocky for its own good I think. It might hit back soon if they don't soften up and care about "the crazy ones" again. Now that an unlocked iPhone costs more than a MacBook it kind of sets things in perspective. I think Apple is getting to the point where they are starting to misuse their position.
I see this as an example of the increasingly common "Apple is wrong so the world must be crazy" line of thinking.
That is, Apple keeps selling lots of stuff at prices some parties find excessive, and since the answer can't be "Apple is charging what people are willing to pay", then it must be the result of some kind of mass psychosis, or the RDF, or, in the case of the deals Apple has made with cell carriers, some kind of shake-down.
Presumably Jobs threatened those companies with physical harm if they didn't agree to his insane, money grubbing terms, and at some point, when the powerful drugs wear off, they'll all realize that the iPhone sucks and they got played as fools.
As will the people buying iPhones, who are, apparently, largely stupid rich people, fan boys, clueless trend chasers, the easily duped, the easily hypnotized, and hapless newbies, who don't understand that they can buy other phones that do more for less. It's just a shame there are so many of them.
Oh, and, of course, loyal Apple customers that are required to buy the iPhone at whatever price Apple cares to charge, and will hate every minute of their Apple using life from now on.
Damn you, Apple, your sinister web of mind control must be broken.
In situations where there is no revenue-sharing (ie, contract-free, SIM-unlocked phones), the subsidy is gone, so the difference is recovered by charging the true full price they expected to realize from the phone in one up-front charge. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
The only way I can think of justifying the subsidy is Apple's continued development of the iPhone's OS and apps. Apple will supply updates to iPhone users for no additional charge. But that does not mean that Apple intended to absorb the cost of that continued development.
The Chinese doesn't care if they have an "REAL" iPhone!~
Do you have any proof of this besides your own opinion?