Very fair point because achieving one of those objectives is likely to defeat the other.
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02 Pay & Go iPhone
- Thread starter Nipz
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Very fair point because achieving one of those objectives is likely to defeat the other.
I think the most obvious case where someone would want to do this is a case like mine. I own a non-jailbroken iPhone on an AT&T plan. I like it fine and pay AT&T their due. However, I travel overseas to the UK about four times a year and have a PAYG phone I use there. With my expensive iPhone I'd like to be able to use it in UK without paying AT&T's very high international roaming rates. I even have an O2 SIM I am prepared to use since they are the iPhone partner in UK and have decent rates and service.
But my phone is locked to AT&T. I am considering unlocking it for my next trip and seeing how that goes, although I don't want to risk the firmware. I think I should be allowed to have an unlocked iPhone. Since AT&T is now treating the iPhone like any other phone, they should give me an official unlock code like they did for my old KRZR. Somehow, I don't think that will happen.
The crux of the problem is that unlocking the iPhone to use on O2 in UK is effectively the same as universally unlocking it to use on tMobile in the US. AT&T doesn't want to do that. I understand, but it is limiting for my legitimate desire to use my iPhone cost effectively abroad.
But keep your eye out - maybe AT&T will unlock iPhones like they do others.
Maybe they don't want to deter "box breakers"...A contract iphone for those that want one and a PAYG iphone for the unlockers.
Makes some sense, if there's a market for unlocked iphones then price the PAYG iphone high enough to make a decent profit yet low enough to encourage sales.
Could be the guy in the article was about right at £349.
That link does not counter any of the points I put across previously. O2 already knew that the original phones were being unlocked and shipped into the country from the US anyway, thus they knew it was a potential problem long before the phone went on sale in the UK. The baseband upgrade kept them on top for a while but as soon as it was hacked they continued to sell the phones in the same way.
Instead of increasing the prices even further after the 4.6 baseband had been hacked, they decreased the price and sweetened the tariffs! Why? Because they priced a lot of people out of the UK iPhone market. You didn't see them raise the price just to protect against unlockers as in the logic of your argument, or the logic of the article you cited. If O2, had made the iPhone tariffs more competitive in the first place, one could argue that unlocking would not have become so sought after by the public.
But, there are always going to be folk out there who like to pick things up, look at them, open them up, work out what goes on inside and ask questions... What if the device could do this? That? Or the other? In other words, hackers. Just like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. I'm pleased to be part of that group of folk.
Your argument is flawed. Are you saying that O2 are obligated to provide a PAYG option? O2 do not have to introduce a PAYG option... If they are that concerned about unlocking, they make it contract only. Simple as. The argument you present that "had the previous gen iPhones not been unlocked, the PAYG price would be cheaper than what they might ultimately decide upon" is fundamentally flawed in my opinion.
The sales definitely were not lacklustre.
The iPhone sold pretty well here. 190,000 in the first two months alone.
Hey thanks a lot! I think the main thing is that if O2 were that bothered by unlockers, they wouldn't even entertain the idea of providing it as a PAYG option.
Good to know I'm not the only one who thinks that though.
O2 may feel that they have to provide a PAYG option because the phone will be available in many more countries than before, and the phone may be offered PAYG in some if not all of these other countries. If there was no PAYG option for the iPhone 3G in the UK, ie. O2 making it contract only, then people may start to import 3G iPhones from other countries that do offer PAYG/SIM free 3G iPhones and use or resell them, therefore O2 runs the risk of losing revenue for each imported iPhone 3G being used.
Therefore from O2's perspective it's a better idea to offer an official PAYG iPhone 3G then have people import phones from abroad and use them with 3/Orange/T-Mobile/Vodafone SIM cards.
That's all very well and good but what exactly does this have to do with the iPhone now costing more on PAYG because of hackers?
O2 drop the price below the AT&T iphone price --- thereby Chinese and Russians started buying UK iphones instead of US iphones to unlock.
They got rid of the excess inventory, nothing more and nothing less.
It means activated on the O2 network. In other words you will walk out of the store with an 18 month contract.
You will have to activate in store. How else would they decide how much your gonna pay for the handset if you don't sign the contract? Logical...
Edit: re read and I dont think this answers your question.
That was dealing with the reason why O2 felt obliged to offer the iPhone 3G on PAYG in the first place. Once that basic reason is understood, the previous argument that related to the iPhone costing more on PAYG (go back and read some of the earlier messages) should be made clearer, since if O2 has to offer the phone on PAYG in the UK (to theoretically protect their revenue against cheap imports), then O2 has in turn to protect itself from any potential revenue losses caused by unlocking; a fact that was made clear from what happened when the 2G iPhone was on the market and lots of phones ended up being unlocked/resold. Simple
The greater the subsidy O2 gives to each PAYG phone, the more money is lost each time a particular phone is unlocked and used on another network, so if the risk of unlocking is higher then there's a greater chance that more phones will be unlocked and of O2 losing even more money as a result, hence resulting in an incentive to keep the PAYG handset subsidy lower together with the sale price higher than it might have been.
Of course you can argue that O2 have less to lose from the deal this time round, but actually convincing O2 bosses of this may take some doing, and it's basically Apple's fault for charging too much for the iPhone in the fiirst place
I totally agree, they had excess inventory.
Due to what? Based on my conversations with people and reviews from mags etc, I'd say they couldn't shift iPhones because the cost was too high for the feature set on offer, that the masses wanted.
That was dealing with the reason why O2 felt obliged to offer the iPhone 3G on PAYG in the first place. Once that basic reason is understood, the previous argument that related to the iPhone costing more on PAYG (go back and read some of the earlier messages) should be made clearer, since if O2 has to offer the phone on PAYG in the UK (to theoretically protect their revenue against cheap imports), then O2 has in turn to protect itself from any potential revenue losses caused by unlocking; a fact that was made clear from what happened when the 2G iPhone was on the market and lots of phones ended up being unlocked/resold. Simple
The greater the subsidy O2 gives to each PAYG phone, the more money is lost each time a particular phone is unlocked and used on another network, so if the risk of unlocking is higher then there's a greater chance that more phones will be unlocked and of O2 losing even more money as a result, hence resulting in an incentive to keep the PAYG handset subsidy lower together with the sale price higher than it might have been.
Of course you can argue that O2 have less to lose from the deal this time round, but actually convincing O2 bosses of this may take some doing, and it's basically Apple's fault for charging too much for the iPhone in the fiirst place
Where are the cheap imports? Look at Italy's PAYG iphone prices.
It is clear to me that Apple were incredibly over-optimistic about how the iPhone would be received in the U.K. Their stock levels at launch were so high that they were still trying to get rid of them almost six months later.
I bought an iPhone on launch night (9th of November 2007) and it was a week 43 (production run).
My sister-in-law bought one of the £169 bargain iPhones in April 2008 and guess what? Yes, it was a brand new phone produced in week 43 of 2007. Seems to me that it had been languishing on an O2 shelf for months!
Clearly Apple made a serious miscalculation about how popular the iPhone would be in the U.K. at the price it wanted to charge, combined with the contracts that were on offer!
That was dealing with the reason why O2 felt obliged to offer the iPhone 3G on PAYG in the first place. Once that basic reason is understood, the previous argument that related to the iPhone costing more on PAYG (go back and read some of the earlier messages) should be made clearer, since if O2 has to offer the phone on PAYG in the UK (to theoretically protect their revenue against cheap imports), then O2 has in turn to protect itself from any potential revenue losses caused by unlocking; a fact that was made clear from what happened when the 2G iPhone was on the market and lots of phones ended up being unlocked/resold. Simple
As samab said, the price reductions were a result of excess inventory. I have already mentioned why this was likely the case. I really doubt that O2 and CPW reduced the prices to combat cheaper overseas imports.
Exactly samab... Spot on. Let's not forget that Germany and France both offered unlocked iPhones. They priced them way above what most people could afford. Did they do this to protect against unlocking iMachine? I think not.
hi, I just wonder how you managed to get your o2 email working. Can you share me the setting for this please? Am on web bolt on and would really want my email working in LG Viewty.
They reduced the price to clear inventory, but I was previously referring to the normal price of £269 or more with a (intended) contract.
Bear in mind that when the price of the first iPhone was reduced, the phones started to sell quickly, but the majority of them were still to unlockers (I nearly bought one myself at that price) as opposed to people taking out expensive contracts with O2; O2 was losing even more money in the short term (they hoped to make it up eventually via the contract sales) but it had to be done in order to clear inventory before the iPhone 3G was announced.
As for foreign PAYG/unlocked iPhones, they either had a lower level of subsidy or no subsidy at all which meant that they were expensive, and this also seems to apply to the 3G iPhone as well even with the additional 'protection' of contract phones being activated instore as opposed to at home.
Did you unlock?
I don't get it. You're just repeating what I've said and haven't introduced any justification for your original statement of...
All in all, I'm not sure what the point is that you're trying to make now.
You need to create an account with o2 if you have not already.
The settings are:
User ID: your o2 username
Password: your o2 password
Sending Host: smtp.o2.co.uk
Sending Port: 25
Receiving Host: mail.o2.co.uk
Receiving Port: 110
Security: none
That should work, you will need to find the page where you enter all the settings.
O2 PAYG Pricing
Sorry to p**s on the fire of PAYG, as im also hoping it'll be a nice low price, but i've spotted this on iphonic and it doesnt look good!
http://www.iphonic.tv/2008/06/vodafone_italy_announces_contr.html
Basically it reads that the price in Italy for the 8gb will be 499 (£395), while the 16GB model will be 569 (£451).
Now i know there can be some variables with local taxes, etc but its looking as if it could be expensive to go the route of PAYG, as if it was cheap everyone would go this route and O2 and CPWH wouldn't make any revenue. Even if the prices were close to this mark, its still a lot of money, nearly £500 for the 16gb!! I also have a funny feeling that due to a possible high price for the 16gb O2 may go the route of making the 8gb the only PAYG iPhone available, not 16gb as they know it just wouldn't sell at this price point.
Sorry to p**s on the fire of PAYG, as im also hoping it'll be a nice low price, but i've spotted this on iphonic and it doesnt look good!
http://www.iphonic.tv/2008/06/vodafone_italy_announces_contr.html
Basically it reads that the price in Italy for the 8gb will be 499 (£395), while the 16GB model will be 569 (£451).
Now i know there can be some variables with local taxes, etc but its looking as if it could be expensive to go the route of PAYG, as if it was cheap everyone would go this route and O2 and CPWH wouldn't make any revenue. Even if the prices were close to this mark, its still a lot of money, nearly £500 for the 16gb!!
I also have a funny feeling that due to a possible high price for the 16gb O2 may go the route of making the 8gb the only PAYG iPhone available, not 16gb as they know it just wouldn't sell at this price point.Sorry to p**s on the fire of PAYG, as im also hoping it'll be a nice low price, but i've spotted this on iphonic and it doesnt look good!
http://www.iphonic.tv/2008/06/vodafone_italy_announces_contr.html
Basically it reads that the price in Italy for the 8gb will be 499 (£395), while the 16GB model will be 569 (£451).
Now i know there can be some variables with local taxes, etc but its looking as if it could be expensive to go the route of PAYG, as if it was cheap everyone would go this route and O2 and CPWH wouldn't make any revenue. Even if the prices were close to this mark, its still a lot of money, nearly £500 for the 16gb!!
In response to when i posted that mmoosa said:
i posted this comparison in another thread but here it is again....
SAME phone....SAME network...UK v ITALY...PAYG PRICES.
I assume it is because of the VAT/Taxes being different etc. just a guess.
Its should give you an indication to what the iphone price should be around...only time will tell.
It is highly irritating that they can't just tell us what it'll cost. It's not like they don't know what they'll be charging, why must they be like this?? It'd be more understandable if they were still keeping costs of the contact version under wraps too, but this is just stupid.