iPhone Pricing Details: Getting iPhones To Unlock Just Got A Whole Lot Trickier
from the can't-play-that-game-any-more dept
When we wrote about the iPhone pricing immediately after the Steve Jobs keynote, it wasn't entirely clear what the details were, and if AT&T/Apple had shifted to a typical carrier-subsidized model. However, the details quickly became clear. Indeed, Apple and AT&T ditched the deal they had last year, whereby Apple actually received a cut of AT&T's service fees. Instead, AT&T is buying the devices directly from Apple and then selling them (at a loss) to customers who will need to sign up for a more expensive service and a two-year contract (rather than the old one-year contract). Basically, this is back to the traditional model of mobile phone sales -- which Apple had suggested was a thing of a past just a year ago.Either way, though, the deal works out fine for Apple. It still gets the full price it needs to get on the iPhones and doesn't have to worry about recouping service fees from folks who unlock iPhones. AT&T, on the other hand, now becomes a lot more reliant on service fees, first to make up for the loss on the device sale, and then to show growth in its 3G network usage. To that end, it appears that AT&T has totally ditched the old model where you could buy an iPhone and "activate" it on your own. No more. Now you have to both buy and activate the phone in stores. You can't order the phones online and have them delivered to be self-activated. In Engadget's post, the writer seems confused by this, and quotes AT&T's bogus claim that it did away with self-activation because the company "found that many others wanted to complete purchase and activation in one step so they could walk out of the AT&T store with their iPhone up and running." If that were the case, they could have just added in-store activation, without removing the option for self-activation.
The real reason seems pretty obvious: if you have to both buy and activate the phones at the same time and they require a two year contract, it's a lot trickier to get your hands on an iPhone for unlocking purposes. Since the full process is supposed to happen at once, it seems unlikely that stores will be letting people walk out the door with an iPhone that doesn't also have a contract. Those hundreds of thousands of unactivated iPhones that disappeared into China? Not so easy this time around (of course, you'll also note that the new iPhone will be available in 70 countries, so they're trying to stamp out the issue from the supply side too). Yes, there will still be 3G iPhones out there that can be unlocked, but that market is going to dry up significantly and cost a lot more.
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Filed Under: iphone, pricing, subsidies, unlocking
Companies: apple, at&t
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unlocked iphones
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Note to Steve Jobs....
Quit being AT&T's bitch.
Grow a pair and sell unlocked iPhones.
What are the carriers gonna do? Turn down customers wanting service?
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unlocked iphones
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Re:
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Can we import to US
Just wondering.
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Always a 2-year contract.
Anyone buying any new subsidized phone from AT&T will sign a 2-year agreement. It has been this way for several years now. It is true that ou can maybe get a 0 or 1 year contract if you know someone at the local dealer or otherwise sweet-talk the sales person. But the vast majority of new customers to any major carrier in the US signs a 2-year contract these days.
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Rate plans for the iPhone
But the old page, prior to the announcemnt, is still avaiable in the Google cache. You can also google for ''iphone "rate plans"''.
The $60x24 aspect was what stopped me from getting one of these things as a birthday gift.
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why just at&t
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Re: why just at&t
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This is a boon for those that want to sell iPhone 1.0
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Corrections, Answers, & Arrogant Comments
"This will affect our chances of getting a 3G iPhone to unlock for all of about a week. I wouldn't worry too much about it."
Sure, within a week one may be able to unlock or "jailbreak" an iPhone from a technical perspective. But (unless you also commit fraud) you will still have the two-year contract with AT&T with the voice plan and mandatory $30 monthly data fee.
So you can put a T-Mobile SIM in the phone, get reduced functionality (ex: visual VM), smaller 3G US Network footprint, and you can pay both the T-Mo bill AND the AT&T bill. Go nuts, stick it to the man!
RE: #5 "Will [3G] iPhones from overseas be sold without a contract?" They just might, but don't expect them to be cheap. There has always been a market for unlocked high-end phones from the likes of Nokia, SE, etc. But the mass market has preferred to accept being force-fed the locked units the carriers offer us because of the subsidy they are willing to invest. It's a Faustian relationship, but both parties enter it willingly again, and again, so that's just the market speaking.
RE: #7 "I'm never going to leave verizon..." Well, then, don't hold your breath for a iPhone. iPhone, for reasons of scale economies, is built with GSM-type radios. These work in most countries of the world (including AT&T and T-Mobile networks). Verizon uses another radio technology called CDMA, which is used in a dozen major countries. Apple will probably NEVER offer a CDMA iPhone. But all is not lost: around 2012, a technology called LTE will unite the two camps, and maybe then you can buy a LTE iPhone and port it over to Verizon Wireless. Mark your calendar. But to your point, whether Apple "opens" it or not is irrelevant to you if you want to stay on VZW.
RE #9: "I saw someone when I was in Costa Rica using an iPhone." Anyone can use their iPhone in Costa Rica. It's called international roaming. If you are using a different country as your home carrier, you'll pay high roaming rates, but it'll work. But if you are just not clearly saying, "They were using it with a Costa Rica network/bill provider" then all it means is that they jailbroke their iphone and popped in a local SIM card.
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Re: Corrections, Answers, & Arrogant Comments
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But no, I somehow doubt they can restrain their short term greed even that far. After all, think of the lost ringtone fees!
Mark my words, one of the down and out carriers is going to get a big break on this transition, because the top carriers are all too afraid of "competing with their existing services."
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Re:
Just grab the sim out of your current phone, pop it in the new unlocked smartphone you magically found yourself in possesion of; and you are good to go.
Some configuration of the new smartphone's OS may be required to get everything working though...
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Re: Re:
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AT&
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The Blackberry...
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Does Apple care about unlocking?
Originally I thought that the issue was that Apple needed to partner with a carrier that wanted the iPhone. Now that the iPhone is the "must have" phone, I'd think that any carrier would be happy to have them on their network, especially if that keeps people from defecting to AT&T.
At any rate, I'm on Verizon. I'm still using an XV6700 because (at the time) it was the best phone that also sync'd with Exchange. My only complaint is that the XV6700 doesn't do GPS. Now that the iPhone can do both of those things and a whole lot more, I'm considering switching. But first I have to see what Android looks like.
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Re: Does Apple care about unlocking?
Because that's their slogan. ;-)
Why should they care?
Because their contract forces them to. They agreed not to sell through anybody but ATT for... what? Five years? Three years?
Originally I thought that the issue was that Apple needed to partner with a carrier that wanted the iPhone.
My understanding is that any carrier would like to sell the iPhone, just not with Steve's conditions.
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well,
and i was looking forward to getting my g3 and jailbreaking it right away
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for sale
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Not an issue really
Really, where's the big issue? I could see if the contract breaking fee was huge, but really, $375 isn't really a bad price for the thing in the first place.
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Hmm...
First, it's not an unlocked 3G iPhone. It's a 3G iPhone that no longer has a contract. You still have to figure out how to unlock it and get someone else to put it on their network.
Secondly, I wouldn't be so sure about that $175 fee. With most carriers I've seen it's usually more like $250, and I wouldn't be surprised if AT&T had a card up their sleeve for just such a situation.
The one thing that I can't get past is charging an extra $15 a month for the ability to sync your email with Exchange. How is that not covered as part of their "unlimited data" plan? It sounds like their "unlimited data" plan is "unlimited" unless the data is RPC over HTTPS. I wonder how they'll enforce that? Are they going to scan every HTTPS packet out there, or just lock that functionality on the phone unless you pay for it?
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iphone theft will be at an all time high
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Unpleasantly surprised
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Bollocks
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