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they dont have an "US income" tho, 7€ probably equals to what we pay. hell i spent 3 weeks in india and travelled around i 5 star hotels with less than 100 $ total

I think i understand what you mean... but the point the poster was that in the US an iphone will cost $600 but the plan will cost say, $1800+. In developing countries, however, for a $600 iphone, the plans can cost as low as $10 month (in the case of Unicom), or $360 over 3 years.

The point being that if you can afford a $600/$400 iphone, the you probably can afford data plans.

.
 
As long as it has 8GBs of storage, then i think it should be fine. But the price has to be much cheaper than $400 without contract for people to buy it in pre-paid markets.
 
Didn't an article on here say that Apple WANTS people to buy devices with LARGER amounts of storage BECAUSE of expensive data plans, so they are less relying on streaming to get media.

If apple thought streaming media was evil they would be activity promoting Pandora in some of their ads or have spent more than $80M acquiring LaLa service.

Frankly, Apple is a "good partner" to the telco that want to increase their average user monthly bill with higher data plans.

However, there are other parts of the world where the telcos just want people to buy prepaid time. That means less expensive phones.

Apple is going to have to be a "good partner" with those telcos too.

The "iCloud" feature would be a good way to "sell" the phone targeted at the other telcos ( dominated by prepaid) to the telcos that like higher data plans. Kill two birds with one stone with only slightly different marketing varying depending upon the local market.

I'm sure the "iCloud" feature of the pre-paid targeted phone will be totally optional for usage. In those other counties, people just won't use the optional features.
 
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I can't believe how much you have to Pay in the US for an iPhone 4, UK supplier Three give you a 16Gb iPhone 4 for £69 (~$100) with 2000 mins, unlimited texts and unlimited data for £35 per month on a two year contract. That's jet a standard deal, I've not looked for any offers.
 
4 GB of storage

I figure on at least 4G of storage for this device if it comes out. I don't think that streaming will be the way of listening to music. Most likely through the use of icloud you will be able to download playlists and songs you don't bring with you.

You need at least 4gb just to carry apps with you
 
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Mike Oxard said:
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I can't believe how much you have to Pay in the US for an iPhone 4, UK supplier Three give you a 16Gb iPhone 4 for £69 (~$100) with 2000 mins, unlimited texts and unlimited data for £35 per month on a two year contract. That's jet a standard deal, I've not looked for any offers.

lol same. i paid 99 $ for my iPhone 4 and pay 25$ monthly. i could have got it for 1$ but that plan was too close to US plan prices :p
 
I dont believe it. At least not for the US market.

To make a cloud based phone work to apples standards you would need 2 things currently missing from the US market.
1) Unlimited data - a cloud based device would be pretty useless if you limited to 2 gig of data. A complete joke at something like the 200mb plan from At&T.

2) 4G LTE - current 3g technology doesnt have anywhere near the capacity. It takes a lot of bandwidth to stream high quality music, not even thinking about HD video content. Devices would spend too much time buffering for apple to consider it an acceptable user experience.
 
I have a prepaid Android smartphone (LG Thrive) that was $150, and added a 32GB microSD card for $60. This is the low-cost prepaid smartphone market Apple needs to compete in. Since my $210 phone has 3G, Bluetooth, true GPS, a camera, and 32GB of memory... Apple would look pretty silly trying to sell a lower-featured phone for $400 in that market - and I'm sure they realize that. I expect they'll do something people aren't really expecting (and some version of this "cloud phone" concept very well could be it).

I realize the big prepaid markets are overseas; but if you're not one of those people that have a phone glued to your ear all the time, prepaid makes sense even here in the US. No one in my family makes many calls, so we switched to pre-paid plans all around - it's saving us quite a bit every month, even with the $20/month unlimited texting plan we gave our daughter. I initially bought a big data plan, but - with wifi just about everywhere I go - I'm finding I only use 5-10 MB of 3G bandwidth every month.

Addendum: Whenever I've brought this up before, someone always brings up the "great deal" Virgin or Boost offers for $25/mo. Here in western Washington State, Sprint's network simply sucks - and all these bit players use Sprint's network. Not to mention that we're paying significantly less than $75/month for three phones.
 
I simply can't see this big of a transition until carriers bring back cheap unlimited data plans. I certainly hope that Apple continues to produce high quality iPhones with lots of storage alongside these.

First, when was there ever "cheap unlimited data plans" from (I presume you mean) U.S. carriers?

Second, why would the carriers ever bring back cheaper prices if the sheep demonstrate a willingness- albeit forced due to lack of any real competition- to pay whatever prices they ask? We all whine about the cost but how many actually decide to cancel service? The subscriber numbers only move ONE way... even in a long recession/depression.
 
I don't believe this for an instant. Apple has no need whatsoever to add a low cost iPhone to the market. They already will have 2. The low cost alternatives will be the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS, which will probably be priced at $199 and free respectively. If they already have low cost options already developed and being manufactured, why risk making a new one?
 
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Napsju said:
Ehh, as if flash based storage is expensive. Bought a 32GB usb stick for only € 20 last week... :confused:

add the apple tax and ur left with 100€ ;)
 
1) Unlimited data - a cloud based device would be pretty useless if you limited to 2 gig of data. A complete joke at something like the 200mb plan from At&T.

which raises the costs. Unless, targeting Sprint ( which clings to unlimited because in distant 3rd place) unlimited plans aren't coming back.

Apple sells more phones outside the US than in. that is going to affect the design at some point. (already did with the initial GSM targeting).



The initial iPhone had no large 3rd party apps and was not "useless". A primary reason folks balked at the 4GB iPhone was that is so freaking expensive. Many thousands of 2GB ipod shuffles are sold every quarter. With lower price people will take lower GB capacity. Pay less, get less not really a problem.


2) 4G LTE - current 3g technology doesnt have anywhere near the capacity. It takes a lot of bandwidth to stream high quality music, not even thinking about HD video content. Devices would spend too much time buffering for apple to consider it an acceptable user experience.

Complete non starter. If looking to produce a less expensive phone put the most expensive radios possible into it is the completely opposite direction. That makes no sense. That is an iPhone 5 ( or 4GS) feature.

You have a bit warped view of the iCloud iPhone. You are trying to make a phone that is just as capable as the "full" version iPhone. By sucking on the internet constantly you are trying to offset the differences.
The point isn't to equalize the two. the point is to deliver a more affordable device for people who can't afford the more expensive model. Those with money will need to trade money to get full function. Apple isn't going to deliberately cannibalize the "full version" iPhone any more than they delibertely cannibalize between Mac versions.
 
This Phone is Not Gonna Happen

Let say for a second that Apple was considering dropping the flash memory from the device to lower the price. Fair enough. But according to every single price breakdown of the iPhone 4, at 16GB the price would only drop around $20. The loss of flash is certainly not enough to get a $600 phone down to a $400 price point. And I agree with all the other commenters on the mobile 'data' issues this would create. Apple would never create this product. The source is ********. End of story.
 
The news/rumor about Apple working on a low cost phone is hardly surprising. In the last earnings call, Tim Cook was screaming with the loudest microphone that Apple is working on it. ( in subtle terms of course, but it was loud and clear ). Apple wants to play in the pre-paid market. Whether it is this rumor or rumors to come in the next few weeks is just a matter of detail. But one thing is certain, they would not release a crappy phone just to play in the low-end, again paraphrasing Tim Cook.
 
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lol same. i paid 99 $ for my iPhone 4 and pay 25$ monthly. i could have got it for 1$ but that plan was too close to US plan prices :p

The price difference seems crazy, if they introduce a low cost iPhone in Europe it'll probably be free with a cheap monthly contract after a couple of months. I'd always thought Apple weren't interested in the bottom end of the market, but this will force it that way to get a cheaper phone in the US. No problem I suppose, but the impression I get on here at least is that the US gets a raw deal due to the carriers.
 
I can see a real possibility of an iCloud phone. Sure it wouldn't do everything a regular iPhone would do, but I think it's a great idea if released. If it just does email, web, calendar and contacts I'd be happy. I have an iPad for everything else I need to do. My wife and I are planning on making the jump to Verizon and getting iPhone 5's when released. A stripped down iCloud phone would meet both our needs just fine and if we could get it free with a 2 year contract that is what we would do.
 
Let say for a second that Apple was considering dropping the flash memory from the device to lower the price. Fair enough. But according to every single price breakdown of the iPhone 4

Flash isn't the only component they could chuck. Starting at the 3GS and working backwards cuts the price even more. For example, Getting rid of the "retina display" would also add to the reduction.

If the objective is to create a more afforable phone .... why start with the currently most expensive phone? Apple could put slightly modified 3GS "guts" into a modified iPhone 4 frame (with cost reductions) and get a cheaper phone. Rumor people could easily tag this as iPhone 4 because they are looking at the case and not the insides or the screen.
 
The price difference seems crazy, if they introduce a low cost iPhone in Europe it'll probably be free with a cheap monthly contract after a couple of months. I'd always thought Apple weren't interested in the bottom end of the market.

A $200-300 phone isn't the bottom end. There are lots of phones less expensive than that. The question is whether Apple wants to put a phone into the middle of the market or stay up in the high end.
 
This is ridiculous! No way! I could see them having a low cost phone with only 8gb of memory, but not running all apps from iCloud. Memory is one of the cheaper components on a phone these days! You can get a 32gb sd card for $50-$60 for crying out loud!:rolleyes:
 
The issue is NOT the cost of the phone, it's the cost of the monthly service that keeps some people away. I could fork over $200 (with contract) for an iPhone, I just can't justify paying $90+ bucks a month for limited service when I can get pretty much unlimited/no contract for $25 from Virgin. And Android is not that bad on an LG smart-phone. I would rather have an iPhone... but you get my point.

If Apple were to figure out a way to bypass service providers to provide messaging and internet access via the iCloud, for a price... say $200 a year, I'd definitely be down for that! As for phone calls, I rarely make those anymore. Most people I communicate with prefer in person, text, or email. Whenever I do make a voice call, I usually get the persons voice mail anyway.
 
If I change my iTunes music on my device through iCloud then leave WiFi I'm pretty sure the music remains on the device, so I'm not sure what you're saying here.

I expect Apple is going to blur this line between download and stream with iTunes Match in their usual elegant and cleverly misleading manner. The ambiguity in which it was all presented and remains described on their web page says it all.

It's a cloud service. At some point, to get a given non-local song to play on your device, you must connect to the cloud, then either download/store/play/save for later, or simply stream it. It's a ~5MB hit to your data plan per song (unless you're in WiFi range) no matter how you slice it. So what 's more Apple-like for a song that's not stored locally on your device but you do own "in the cloud?"

  1. Search the Apple Store/cloud for the song, click download, wait for it, play it, repeat for every other song you think of
  2. Press play in iPod from universally sync'd playlists, and when non-local song comes up, it plays from the cloud. Essentially if either you paid $1.29 for it, iTunes matches it, or you've stored it in your own 5GB iCloud, your iPod plays the full song from the store (instead of just the 90sec preview) or your own iCloud stored version.
Again, it's pretty much 6 and a half-dozen of the other, but the smoother experience is that the user "sees" all their music organized in their custom playlists as being "on" their iPod, and behind the scenes the software decides whether to play a local copy, play from the cloud, skip the song because it's not available, or display a message "This song cannot be played because you are not connected to the internet." Storing and syncing mere KB "iTunes Library.xml" files and streaming/downloading/playing the remote files is analogous to iCal storing .ics files in the cloud but displaying events on the local client apps.

Whether it's downloading, streaming, or some clever revolutionary magical combination with temporary local caching of the most recently played and/or next upcoming songs...at some point it is impossible to have all your music anywhere anytime without a constant internet connection or unrealistically large local storage drive. It remains to be seen exactly how this is implemented, but it has by no means been definitively described as "manually download and keep all the music on the device." If it were just that simple, in fact, there'd be no particular advantage to that type of service over the USB syncing to an iTunes master computer we presently have, other than you could futz with your sync settings while at the coffee shop away from the computer.

To be a valuable service, iTunes Match needs to seamlessly and intelligently manage moving/playing content from the cloud onto and off of the mobile device. It's Pandora with your personal iTunes playlists as the DJ playing iTunes store/cloud music files. Surely a setting to function only while on WiFi can be included as it already is on several other features.

A pure iCloud iPhone would be the logical extreme extension of this concept.
 
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That would be interesting...

The big question I have is: Will this 'icloud' thing replace me.com, and provide the same (or better) service.

As bad as Steve hates Me.com, I have found myself hooked to it and can't see giving it up.
 
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