Me too. I reckon it's just marketing. Bait 'n' hook. Not that Apple is going to need to stoop that low. These things are going to fly out the door.
ibjoshua
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Apple Removes '2 Year Contract Required' Note on Ads
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Me too. I reckon it's just marketing. Bait 'n' hook. Not that Apple is going to need to stoop that low. These things are going to fly out the door.
ibjoshua
more than 599?
hi everyone... ive been reading the posts here for a long time and figured i should actually register. anyway, not sure if this has been mentioned in posts before, but i spoke to a cingular customer service on 611 yesterday and was told something surprising.
i had dropped and broke my motorola phone and needed to get a new one, i joked and said if only it would have lasted me a few more weeks so i could just replace it with an iphone. we ended up talking for a couple minutes and the customer service guy told me that since my contract wasnt up yet i wouldnt even have been able to get the iphone at the 499 or 599 price. he said that cingular/at&t will be selling the phone without contract for almost twice as much as the apple advertised price; but i could still purchase directly from apple without the increase.
that was the first i had heard of this, so who knows whats going to happen.
see you in line at the apple store!
hi everyone... ive been reading the posts here for a long time and figured i should actually register. anyway, not sure if this has been mentioned in posts before, but i spoke to a cingular customer service on 611 yesterday and was told something surprising.
i had dropped and broke my motorola phone and needed to get a new one, i joked and said if only it would have lasted me a few more weeks so i could just replace it with an iphone. we ended up talking for a couple minutes and the customer service guy told me that since my contract wasnt up yet i wouldnt even have been able to get the iphone at the 499 or 599 price. he said that cingular/at&t will be selling the phone without contract for almost twice as much as the apple advertised price; but i could still purchase directly from apple without the increase.
that was the first i had heard of this, so who knows whats going to happen.
see you in line at the apple store!
A random Cingular rep knows nothing about what's coming, though many have claimed to
A few may guess right, the rest will be caught in their fictions.
This would track with my experience with Cingular. You would be still under the remainder of your current contract, however. This is what they've done with previous phones. But, Apple would be using same policies as Cingular (AT&T), whatever they end up being. I personally don't think they'd bother dealing with anything outside of a contract (new or existing customer).
I'm sorry, not to sound like a jerk but that makes no sense. I think that Rep was just talking and simply not thinking..
Maybe they're going to finally allow those "pay-as-you-go" cards that Tattoo so despises!
yah haha, also on the cingular/ At&t website i think it used to say requires 2 year contract on the iphone page and now its gone. I am not sure if it did I think it didnt but cant remember for sure.
i think the reason they took it off was to get more people wanting it, and when they show up to buy it not knowing about a contract. they'll find out they need a contract and at that moment once people see the iphone they will sign up for a new contract. this is great marketing! I also think that apple will have enough phones for everyone because steve jobs did say that they want to sell 1%market share of 1 billion dollars by one year or so. = to 10 million phones by 2008 ....... oh yeah expect some yahoo applications on it.
If I do end up getting an iPhone, I'll probably go with a contract any way since those plans seem to be better deals that the GoPhone plans and it's not like the iPhone works anywhere else.
Hard to say. They certainly didn't remove the "Only at the new at&t" so it looks doubtful, but here's hoping.
Maybe they just removed it because it never really needed to be in the commercial? Not explicitly stating a 2-year contract is required does not mean a 2-year contract won't be required.
It would make sense for Cingular to offer a GoPhone type plan for the iPhone, just to ensure the maximum available audience given a substantial number of people interested in the iPhone do not have substantial credit histories. Despite Apple's description of the phone as a "smartphone", this really isn't a competitor for the Blackberry/Treo/Nokia 9xxx series so much as it is a competitor for the Sidekick and other relatively locked down lifestyle devices. It's not a business machine, it's a pocketable Internet and multimedia device. It's a _consumer_ item. It needs to be available to _consumers_. And it needs to be available to young consumers more than older ones.
How many teenagers can either afford to commit to a plan or get the credit rating that allows them to sign up? A parent might be happy to commit to the $5-600 it costs as a one off, but how many are going to still be as happy paying that AND committing to a long term contract of over $50 a month?
T-Mobile's been doing the same thing with the Sidekick for a long time and given the fact they're still doing it, I doubt it's been a failure. I would imagine a substantial number of Sidekicks have only been sold on the basis of the dollar-a-day-used prepaid plan T-Mobile offers to make the system available.
Much has been made of the price, and of outrageous claims about what the device is. This may run OS X, but it's no more a computer or smartphone than my phone is an enterprise web application server (hey, my phone and enterprise web servers both run Java! That makes them the same, right?) The marketing confirms it so far. Apple wants you to know this is a device that provides you with the Internet, that has some great ways of making calls, that plays music and movies. It's not playing up the computer angle at all and I seriously doubt they ever will.
Even if AT&T doesn't do it immediately, I'd be very surprised if they don't ultimately offer the iPhone on prepaid.
As an aside, I wonder if the "smartphone" angle was deliberately played up by Apple to mislead potential competitors. Palm has been scrambling to catch up, when it really doesn't have a device that would appeal to natural iPhone customers and when the iPhone is unlikely to appeal to that many Palm users. Ditto Blackberry. Meanwhile, there doesn't seem to have been any significant improvements for more regular phones like the RAZR and its direct competitors. That may be a problem for Motorola, Nokia, et al.
(And having read all of what I just wrote, I'm now realizing why I really don't want an iPhone. Because the Sidekick was never quite what I wanted either. Heh.)
How many teenagers can either afford to commit to a plan or get the credit rating that allows them to sign up? A parent might be happy to commit to the $5-600 it costs as a one off, but how many are going to still be as happy paying that AND committing to a long term contract of over $50 a month?
T-Mobile's been doing the same thing with the Sidekick for a long time and given the fact they're still doing it, I doubt it's been a failure. I would imagine a substantial number of Sidekicks have only been sold on the basis of the dollar-a-day-used prepaid plan T-Mobile offers to make the system available.
Much has been made of the price, and of outrageous claims about what the device is. This may run OS X, but it's no more a computer or smartphone than my phone is an enterprise web application server (hey, my phone and enterprise web servers both run Java! That makes them the same, right?) The marketing confirms it so far. Apple wants you to know this is a device that provides you with the Internet, that has some great ways of making calls, that plays music and movies. It's not playing up the computer angle at all and I seriously doubt they ever will.
Even if AT&T doesn't do it immediately, I'd be very surprised if they don't ultimately offer the iPhone on prepaid.
As an aside, I wonder if the "smartphone" angle was deliberately played up by Apple to mislead potential competitors. Palm has been scrambling to catch up, when it really doesn't have a device that would appeal to natural iPhone customers and when the iPhone is unlikely to appeal to that many Palm users. Ditto Blackberry. Meanwhile, there doesn't seem to have been any significant improvements for more regular phones like the RAZR and its direct competitors. That may be a problem for Motorola, Nokia, et al.
(And having read all of what I just wrote, I'm now realizing why I really don't want an iPhone. Because the Sidekick was never quite what I wanted either. Heh.)
I really hope we can get pay as you go. While it'll be good to have a cell phone (I don't currently have one), I don't think I'd use it that much. I don't call anyone that much nor does anyone call me that much, but good to have when there isn't a phone nearby in case of emergencies and stuff. Besides, watching movies/tv shows on it will be a lot easier than a video iPod.
Amazing?!?!
Nah, it's just Steve screwing with our minds yet again... Nothing truly amazing about that!
D
hands-on
it's obvious that nothing has changed. but apple knows 2 year contracts scare people before they get into the store and play with the iphone. once they touch the iphone, consumers will open their wallets and throw cancel their current phone contracts.
it's obvious that nothing has changed. but apple knows 2 year contracts scare people before they get into the store and play with the iphone. once they touch the iphone, consumers will open their wallets and throw cancel their current phone contracts.
there could still be a penalty...
for the hardware you originally acquired with that contract.
for the hardware you originally acquired with that contract.
Maybe, but it may mean that you can use it as an iPod and as a web communicator via WIFI if you do not have a contract or you cancel the contract.
Actually, we have seen that from AT&T (granted, it's internal information, subject to change, etc.):
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/04/25/iphone-qanda-for-atandt-employees/
Q: If I am an existing customer, can I upgrade and will you give me a credit/subsidy for this device?
A: An existing customer can purchase the iPhone for the same price as a new customer. However, no subsidies are being offered on the phone at this time.
To me, "no subsidies" means no subsidies.
---
Some other information:
- Jobs said during the keynote announcement that the SIM card slot was on the top of the phone, near the headphone jack. That implies an accessible SIM. From 12:50 in the iPhone introduction: "So let's take a look at the top now. We've got a headset jack, 3.5mm, all your iPod headphones fit right in. We've got a place, a little tray, for your SIM card. And we've got one switch for sleep and wake. Push it to go to sleep, push it to take up." Why would you mention, when talking about *external* physical features of the iPhone, that there is a place, "a little tray", for the SIM card if it wasn't externally/user-accessible?
- Even if AT&T is the "exclusive" provider for 5 years, it still remains to be seen how iPhones will be able to be obtained with/without calling plans/contracts/etc. iPhone may represent a new model of unsubsidized phone sales.
- Even if iPhone is "locked" to AT&T (a common practice for US GSM carriers), ALL GSM phones to date are able to be unlocked, e.g., for international usage with prepaid SIM cards, etc. If iPhone isn't able to be unlocked for such use, it would be the first phone from any US GSM carrier that I've seen that wouldn't be.
- There is NO TECHNICAL REASON iPhone couldn't work on any GSM carrier. *Of course* things like visual voicemail won't work, but GSM is a standard, and at a minimum, the basic data/voice functionality of the phone will work on any GSM carrier with a valid SIM. This presumes that there will be an way to get Cingular to unlock the phone, e.g., for international travel, which, yes, they do in fact do routinely, AND that the SIM slot is accessible. (If the SIM slot is not user-accessible, this may be the justification for keeping iPhone locked to only AT&T.)
- Some people have said some ridiculous things in other threads about "WiFi probably only works if you have a plan", etc. This is ridiculous. I don't even need to see the phone to know that WiFi will absolutely work without a plan. It would be stupid for the phone to be set up any other way. (Imagine a scenario where you are out of range of ALL GSM carriers - that's the only way iPhone would know if it has any sort of service agreement - in that scenario, why on earth would WiFi not work? Answer: of course it would. And it's silly to say that WiFi would only work if you had a plan; that's like saying the iPod functionality will only work if you keep paying your bill. The ONLY thing that won't work without a plan is things that depend on the phone functionality/GSM service).