Well the iPhone may be hard to come by in the U.S. these days, but they’re practically giving them away overseas. As Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster notes today, two more mobile phone retailers — Britain’s 02 and Carphone Warehouse — have cut the price of the 8 GB iPhone by 37 percent. This follows another, even more drastic price reduction earlier this month, of 75 percent, by T-Mobile in Germany.
Munster thinks the cuts indicate that the demand for iPhones in Europe is light. However, he also believes iPhone carriers are clearing the way for the new 3G model, expected to be launched in June.
Meanwhile, RIM’s BlackBerry keeps adding addicts overseas: Roughly 33 percent of its subscriber base is now outside of North America, according to Scotia Capital’s Gus Papageorgiou — with most of it in Europe.
5 comments so far
2:51 PM PT
They are not giving them away everywhere in Europe Irina
http://patphelan.net/o2-rubs-salt-in-the-wounds-of-irish-consumer-with-paddy-tax-version-2/
3:16 PM PT
Apple thinks the European market works like the US-American - it doesn’t. Apple hasn’t nearly the same brand power than in the US, and Europeans are used to open and cheap mobile networks.
400 Euros for an iPhone? Most people get their mobile phones for free as part of an already cheap mobile plan.
40 Euros per month for 1000 free minutes and no free SMS? You can get 4000 free minutes for 20 Euros per month.
(Add to that, that in my country, the iPhone is sold by the worst mobile network.)
Apple isn’t the first company that tries to get this market “against the rules”, but so far, all of them failed and ultimatively, Apple will fail, too. (At least they won’t possibly be able to replicate their US success.)
4:22 PM PT
So an 8GB iPhone is now £169, or about $330. Factor in the subscription cost, and it doesn’t seem that much different than the US prices.
8:40 AM PT
Well I hope that we can get our iPhones cheaper in the US sooner or later. Maybe by that time they will have self destructing text messages, like the self-destructing IM service bigstring provides.
8:35 PM PT
[...] Drastic price cuts for the iPhone in Europe appear to show that the demand for the iPhone isn’t that high in Europe: http://gigaom.com/2008/04/16/on-sale-the-iphone-well-in-europe-anyway/ [...]
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