iPhone Japan and Other International Pricing

[MacRumors]

Japanese mobile carrier Softbank announced pricing for the iPhone 3G which will be launched on July 11th, 2008. Softbank will sell the iPhone 3G for 23,040 yen ($214.6) with a monthly charge of 7,280 yen ($67). The service plan provides unlimited data usage and also allows subscribers to talk free between Softbank subscribers for most of the day. This is 70% higher than the average rate plan in Japan of 4,310 yen ($40). Softbank believes they will be able to attract new users to their service:

"We expect users who pay a lot to migrate from au (KDDI's mobile arm) and DoCoMo," Son told a group of reporters. "There have been users who were just attracted to our low price, but the main point this time is feature attractiveness rather than price."

DoCoMo was also in talks with Apple and has "not given up on talks".

Softbank warns that they expect the first supply to "evaporate instantly" and "we in the company will probably fight to get one as well."

Meanwhile, details of other international pricing and service plans have been emerging, including (unconfirmed):

- UK PAYG iPhone priced at £370
- One Australian customer completed an online survey about phones and price plans and listed the iPhone at $220 upfront and $80/mo service plan but may just be speculative pricing.
- iPhone Mexico rates leaked?
- Vodafone and TIM (Italy) announced unsubsidized pricing 499 and 569 euro (8GB and 16GB).

Article Link

[Buschmaster]

Not too shabby, pretty close to what it is everywhere else.

Hopefully there are a lot of people who buy. I think Apple may very well crush their 10 million goal.

[queshy]

hopefully the canadian plan will be confirmed soon by crogers.

[Neutral Gamer]

The standalone UK price for the iPhone isn't too bad at all actually. It may seem expensive if you're used to buying your typical cheap Pay As You Go phone or buying a phone on contract (where the handset cost is subsidised).

But compared to a similar high end phone, the Nokia N95 on o2 for example, it's cheaper than the £449 for the Nokia. I was expecting the phone to be more along the lines of £500-600 as most high end, SIM free phones are when they first come out. So this is a pleasant surprise.

An Apple product being cheaper than you'd expect? Whatever next ...

[Dekimasu]

The "70% higher than the average price" claim is somewhat misleading. I've had contracts with both KDDI and SoftBank's older incarnation (Vodafone Japan), and there was no realistic unlimited data transfer option. On my current KDDI plan, I pay an extra 1000 yen (~$11) a month on top of my plan for a certain set number of packets, including e-mail and mobile web, but not including the normal internet. That scales up to 4500 yen (~50) a month if I use e-mail and the mobile web a lot, but stops there.

The trick is, that excludes use of the internet. Even though I get internet on my phone, I have to pay for internet data transfer from the first time I access a single site. The cost is prohibitive and never stops going up. And most people do use more than 1000 yen of packets, and some people do use the internet.

Thus, the basic 4300 a month cited is for very limited use of e-mail and no internet - not a realistic usage pattern in Japan. The iPhone price is very low for the inclusion of unlimited data transfer.

[CrEsTo]

Great info..

In my opinion prices for Mexico are quite reasonable... $80 per month with 700 mins and unlimited internet plus free 8GB iPhone Sounds good!

[clarkysdonga]

Was informed yesterday that the 3G iPhone will sell between AU$299-399 outright to smash the market meaning that the touch will prob drop by 50 percent in price. Lets hope so.

[BigD58]

Yet nothing confirmed about US prices yet *sigh*....

[quagmire]

So much for the $199 US MAX Jobs said at WWDC.

[arn]

Originally Posted by BigD58

Yet nothing confirmed about US prices yet *sigh*....

US?

Confirmed:
- With a two-year contract, the price of an 8GB iPhone 3G will be $199*; the 16GB model will be priced at $299*
- Unlimited iPhone 3G data plans for consumers will be available for $30 a month, in addition to voice plans starting at $39.99 a month.
- Unlimited 3G data plans for business users will be available for $45 a month, in addition to a voice plan.

* for most people

arn

[happydude]

we'll see how japan adopts the iphone now since their phones are usually crammed with way more features than we have. will probably take off, but i wonder how a phone without picture messaging or a smart phone without disk mode or document editing will be. it's a step back 5 years in the u.s., prob a decade in japan.

[andiyar]

I highly doubt that the Australian pricing is accurate, due to the inclusion of 'talk minutes'. That's not how any of the networks down here describe phone time, they normally state "$X worth of calls". And $80 is incredibly steep for a phone plan down here, even a BlackBerry is available on $79 cap plans - which mean that they're valid for in excess of $500 worth of talk credit.

Additionally, I just received an email from Optus (one of Oz's two launch carriers) stating that pricing info will be released within the next few weeks to people who registered interest at their website - optusiphone.com.au - so yeah, I doubt those numbers are accurate.

Especially since a calculation of an $80 charge on a cap plan (which are the only mobile phone plans down here of even close to that, and also since our data plans are separate and they aren't even mentioned there...) gives up to 1500 minutes of talk time minus flagfall connection charges - standard call fees here tend to be 30-40 cents per thirty seconds.


-Andiyar

[rowanmmcdonald]

Originally Posted by clarkysdonga

Was informed yesterday that the 3G iPhone will sell between AU$299-399 outright to smash the market meaning that the touch will prob drop by 50 percent in price. Lets hope so.

OMG really? You've just made my day! Argh so happy now! Where did you hear this????

[Neutral Gamer]

Originally Posted by happydude

we'll see how japan adopts the iphone now since their phones are usually crammed with way more features than we have. will probably take off, but i wonder how a phone without picture messaging or a smart phone without disk mode or document editing will be. it's a step back 5 years in the u.s., prob a decade in japan.

You make a good point. Considering the amazing amount of features that Japanese phones tend to have and have had years before the rest of the world, I'd be very curious indeed to know what they're gonna make of the phone when taking into account (as well the points you've raised):

• No front camera
• No video recording
• No AD2P
• Low quality camera
• No flash (camera)
• No flash (web)
• No flash (memory card)
• No cut / paste

I suppose it all depends on how much of an Apple fan Japanese consumers are. Anyone know how much they embrace Apple products? With a country so obsessed with the latest and feature brimming gadgets could the iPhone just not match up with Japan's demographic?

[natejohnstone@g]

Will the iPhone3G sold here in the US work with Japanese carriers? I'm military, likely to be stationed in Japan next year. But there isnt' much point in my buying an iPhone this year if I can't even use the thing 12 months from now.

[mavis]

Originally Posted by Buschmaster

Not too shabby, pretty close to what it is everywhere else.

Not too shabby unless you consider the fact that the $70 monthly fee includes no free minutes for voice calls - sure, calls to other Softbank subscribers are free at certain times of the day (from 1am to 9pm), but calls to any other phone in Japan are billed at about $0.40 per minute. No free nights and weekends, etc. Not too shabby? It's NOT EVEN CLOSE to what you guys in the States are getting. Not by a long shot.

Also, existing customers are getting shafted BIG TIME. As I posted in another thread, I just got off the phone with a Softbank customer service rep after inquiring about my account, and my upgrade eligibility. I am 12 months into a two year contract (actually a 27 month contract due to a bit of trickery on Softbank's part) ... My early termination fee will be $450! However, the fun doesn't stop there. Even though I will pay that ETF, I will not qualify for subsidized pricing on the iPhone, as I have not yet been a customer for the full 24 months. I was told that final pricing has not yet been decided, but for other phones, the subsidy in my situation is generally half of what it would be if I were a new customer. WTH??!!

So, to summarize: if you're an existing customer on a contract, you will have to pay a hefty ETF, but will still not qualify for new customer pricing on the iPhone, even though you'll sign a new 24 (actually, 27) month contract for it. The only way to get the 'new customer' pricing is to pay the exorbitant ETF and get a new phone number.

****ing crooks. Am I the only one that sees anything wrong with this picture?!

[clarkysdonga]

http://www.futurecom.com.au/apple-ip...n=Googleiphone

I called these guys about release dates and prices and the guy gave me those figures. He said they were rough figures and to not worry about it anyway because the Nokia N96 was going to be better anyway, and i was like, yeah whatever you reckon!

It makes sense in a way. People state that it will remove the iPod from sales but Apple may not care, might be time for the iPod to take a back seat and let another product rule for awhile, till see through thin glass touch tablets like Minority Report style come out from Apple. Plus the iTouch doesnt have a GPS. It'll be easy to see consumers installing iPhone 3G in cars and wipe out both Nokia and Navman.....poor handheld market is going to be smashed, all they need to do now is conquer the video gaming market......

[SirOmega]

Hopefully the plans are finalized here in the US tomorrow (with all the prices laid out including the unsubsidized prices and details for new/existing customers).

Then the only thing left I'll care about is what time they're going to start selling them (if they have to activate them in store, they better start selling at noon to get a decent amount of phones sold before they close on Friday night).

[mavis]

Originally Posted by Neutral Gamer

You make a good point. Considering the amazing amount of features that Japanese phones tend to have and have had years before the rest of the world, I'd be very curious indeed to know what they're gonna make of the phone when taking into account (as well the points you've raised):

• No front camera
• No video recording
• No AD2P
• Low quality camera
• No flash (camera)
• No flash (web)
• No flash (memory card)
• No cut / paste

I suppose it all depends on how much of an Apple fan Japanese consumers are. Anyone know how much they embrace Apple products? With a country so obsessed with the latest and feature brimming gadgets could the iPhone just not match up with Japan's demographic?

Well, if it's any indication, the few shops that actually accepted pre-orders for the iPhone are beginning to cancel them - they're just getting swamped by interested customers. As Softbank's CEO said: the initial supply of iPhones will evaporate instantly. As advanced as Japanese phones are and have been for years, the iPhone's ease of use, feature integration, and intelligent UI puts them all to shame. Once this initial shipment hits the street, and more people actually see first-hand what the iPhone can do, its sales are going to blow away every other technically superior phone on the market.

[booksacool1]

Wow. $67/month. ****... I currently pay $7-10/month for my mobile plan.
It seems like an amazing waste of money to me.

Honestly, I just use voip at home (free city calls, cheap mobile calls) and free online sms services using WiFi hotspots. Can't afford any more then that.

Talk about disposable income...

[MacinDoc]

The Mexican numbers don't look right. For one thing, the maximum purchase price with a contract is too high. More damning, though, is the fact that the post-tax prices are the same as the pre-tax prices in local currency, but not in U.S. currency.

[Neutral Gamer]

Originally Posted by mavis

As advanced as Japanese phones are and have been for years, the iPhone's ease of use, feature integration, and intelligent UI puts them all to shame. Once this initial shipment hits the street, and more people actually see first-hand what the iPhone can do, its sales are going to blow away every other technically superior phone on the market.

You make a good point. The real key to the iPhone's success (ignoring hardcore Apple fans of course ) is the uniqueness of the interface. When the TV adverts started to be shown people who wouldn't normally be interested in a high end phone suddenly sat up and took notice.

It was testament to two things. Firstly, that the phone could be played with in store so the user could experience the cool interface for themselves. And secondly, the TV adverts actually showed the interface in action.

And this is where I don't understand Apple's marketing department. If they showed off the cool visual features of Mac OS (Expose, Spaces, Time Machine, Stacks etc.) and the Multi-Touch features of the MBP and MBA in TV adverts then surely the same kind of people would sit up and notice as well?

Mac OS is NOT Windows. And yet you'd be suprised by the number of non-Mac users who assume that Macs use Windows. Apple just don't advertise the operating system enough or properly, well definitely not in the UK at least.

[elmimmo]

Originally Posted by happydude

their phones are usually crammed with way more features than we have.

Japanese phones do have some fancy features that are not present on the west, such as a feature-richer GPS, electronic wallet, higher res cameras, free-to-air digital TV, and others. Phones in the west do have a few not abundant in JP, such as Bluetooth, IMAP/POP mail access, non-DRM music playback.

Most Japanese, though, couldn’t care less for ones or the others. Most are afraid of using the electronic wallet, prefer web browsing to watching TV while on the move, watch pictures only on the phone’s display, and are absolutely ignorant on how to use the GPS. Most change their phones every so often just based on the looks, and on that, the iPhone beats them all.

There are two features they cannot live without, though: e-mail and internet. Those have some Japan-only characteristics, though:

- Graphic smilies (emoji). Calling them just that is misleading, though, since they are not just faces, but also flowers, vehicles, symbols, sports, signs, diacritial marks, etc. They come in the hundreds. They use them a LOT on e-mails, and internet JP sites for phones (which is the main one for many -if not most– folks there) is absolutely littered with those.

MobileSafari and MobileMail as of >2.0 do not display those icons, so it essentially breaks most Japanese mobile sites, and people cannot, not only type them in their mails, but neither see the ones they receive from friends. It is yet to be revealed if the update will tackle that, but I am sceptic.

BTW, as of >2.0, MobileSafari’s experience on Japanese mobile sites is terrible. Not only are all those icons missing (which are not just ornaments, but usually have a grammatical function), but lines wrap like they would in the desktop, making the characters way too small (as in unreadable). Zoom in, and you have to scroll both vertically and horizontally to read any text. Terrible to use.

There are also text-based smilies (kaomoji), much more rich in meanings and complex than western ones. It is not sensible to type them manually since they use so many weird characters, so all Japanese phones come with a launcher with a list of 100, to enter through a fast menu in any text field. While I doubt they will add something like this to the Jap IME, well, at least iPhone users will still be able to read the ones friends send to them.

- Typing. Due to how Japanese language works, one types waaaaay faster in Japanese than in any language based on latin characters (no matter predictive dicts). Just to give you a reference, of the 10 best selling fiction books of 2007, 7 were originally written for mobile phones ON mobile phones. Apple clearly saw that it is plain stupid to try to enhance a system people find comfortable enough to write a novel with, so they added a numerical keyb layout for Japanese IME (besides, the iPod Touch’s Jap QWERTY IME is absolutely terrible and unusable, let’s see if they tweak that one too).

If typing ends up feeling awkward (i.e. very different from other phones), it ain’t going to look pretty.

In my opinion, no other feature matters one bit, Jap will be happy to sacrifice them all for the coolest-looking phone if you leave their internet and e-mail intact. But screw up on reading icons and typing, and the iPhone is doomed in Japan.

Summing up: the iPhone will be a hit in JP on day one, that is for certain. As of now, Japanese just know how cool it looks, but not yet if it clashes with their habits and needs. The real important question, actually, is how of a hit it will be 1 year from now (and how Apple’s image will have suffered, maybe just like Vodafone’s did).

PS: Another possibility, of course, now that new apps can be installed on a per-terminal basis, is that SoftBank releases an additional web browser and mail agent just for Japanese mobile content, so it deals at least with the emoji issue. But I honestly doubt it.

[stainlessliquid]

I dont think the iphone is ready for japan. They love cameras and the iphone has minimal camera features and a really bad camera to boot (its a good camera by US standards but their phones rival normal digital cameras). Plus when the iphone first came out the japanese reaction was just "so?" If the iphone hasnt taken off in Europe yet how on earth can it take off in Japan?

And can the iphone read these things?



It seems like the japanese live off of scanning those things with their phones. Those codes are on literally everything, signs, websites, food, tv shows... everything.

The iphone just doesnt have what it takes for the japanese lifestyle. If they "evaporate" right away something tells me it wont be a very big shipment.

[splintah]

Austria

Carrier: One
Price: 149 euros (229 for 16gig)
monthly rate: 24 euros (24 months contract - after 2008 39euros/month)
3gigabyte data
100 sms 1000 min - included -
after that 10cent for calls - 25cent for sms
40euros bonus if bought through website
no activiation fee


http://www.one.at/cgi-bin/onechp/one...cghmdhkgdfgk.0