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iPhone (Germany) to be Announced Next Week?
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Will you people never learn?! Euro prices are quoted with sales tax (VAT), US prices are quoted without sales taxes. VAT in Germany is 19 %, so at 399 € incl. VAT the iPhone's comparable price point would be 335 € net which is not 40 % more than in the US, but only 16.5 % more.
What the hell are you talking about? Sanyo phones are going to eat the iPhone alive? I don't think there are even any Japanese network manufacturer's. If there are, their certainly tiny players compared to Nokia, Qualcomm, Seimens. Sony/Ericson is really Ericson -- they just got bought out after a couple years of losing all their money in the early part of decade -- the development is in Sweden
Says it all
You have nailed it! It is interesting to see all the Euro/Asian comments about a device that has yet to be touched by the commentators. It is clear that the crippled throwaway 3G phone is the ideal piece of mediocrity that all/most of these people want. It is NOT, however, the way Apple sees it-- nor I, as an Apple customer. This is a long term phone that does incredible things and, once true 3rd party apps abound, it will be a stunning replacement/adjunct for my laptop. I use it way more than I ever imagined the day I got it.
The rubbishy arguments about 3G etc is just that... rubbish. Now, when 6+ megs download on 4G is de rigeur universally available and reliable and does not cause battery meltdown, then it would be time to pop the champagne and buy the next version. Til then 2.5 with EDGE is perfectly workable. And wireless is reasonably available!!
Meanwhile, people who insist on 3G can have it--- but not yet on an iPhone... so why complain?? Get the latest Nokia!!! Clearly, the iPhone will not impress you.
You have nailed it! It is interesting to see all the Euro/Asian comments about a device that has yet to be touched by the commentators. It is clear that the crippled throwaway 3G phone is the ideal piece of mediocrity that all/most of these people want. It is NOT, however, the way Apple sees it-- nor I, as an Apple customer. This is a long term phone that does incredible things and, once true 3rd party apps abound, it will be a stunning replacement/adjunct for my laptop. I use it way more than I ever imagined the day I got it.
The rubbishy arguments about 3G etc is just that... rubbish. Now, when 6+ megs download on 4G is de rigeur universally available and reliable and does not cause battery meltdown, then it would be time to pop the champagne and buy the next version. Til then 2.5 with EDGE is perfectly workable. And wireless is reasonably available!!
Meanwhile, people who insist on 3G can have it--- but not yet on an iPhone... so why complain?? Get the latest Nokia!!! Clearly, the iPhone will not impress you.
Don't European prices include VAT? US prices don't include state sales taxes. If German VAT is 19%then the price is not far apart.
German Price (pretax) - 399 *(1-19%)= 323 = $448 vs. $399 for US.
Almost, it is 399/1.19 = 335 = $465
(with today's exchange rate, a year ago 335 would have been only $425).
Australia's the same size as the US. We've got a 14.4Mbit HSDPA network that covers over 98.8% of the population and over one quarter of the land mass.
And to top it off it was built in 10 months from concept to completion. An average of one base station activated every 25 minutes, day and night.
There are three other city-only 3.6Mbit HSDPA networks here too.
If it can be done here, it can be done there...
Even if it doesnt have 3g i dont think it will affect sales very much. I think a lot of the people who will buy the iphone wont even care and dont even know what 3g is. Its just a buzzword to them. People aren't gonna be like 'no thanks it doesnt have 3g'. I know i'll be straight out to be buy one. Its a frickin iphone for god's sake.
Missing out on 3g isn't really going affect the overall usability for me. It would be nice to have but no deal breaker for me and definitely for the average joe. I have an n73 and i wouldnt really mind if it wasnt 3g. I barely get the 3g symbol anyway.
I think a lot of people just want to compare stats and dont really think about how that is gonna actually affect the overall user experience. e.g. the difference between 3.2 megapixels and 5 mp on a phone. The difference is laughable and the quality is so poor when compared to an actual camera, but thats getting away from the point. These things only really matter to the 10% or so who ACTUALLY care about these things and are generally the geekier side of the population. I really dont think I'm that bothered about it not being 3g and I genuinely believe i speak for the majority of people who buy phones.
Missing out on 3g isn't really going affect the overall usability for me. It would be nice to have but no deal breaker for me and definitely for the average joe. I have an n73 and i wouldnt really mind if it wasnt 3g. I barely get the 3g symbol anyway.
I think a lot of people just want to compare stats and dont really think about how that is gonna actually affect the overall user experience. e.g. the difference between 3.2 megapixels and 5 mp on a phone. The difference is laughable and the quality is so poor when compared to an actual camera, but thats getting away from the point. These things only really matter to the 10% or so who ACTUALLY care about these things and are generally the geekier side of the population. I really dont think I'm that bothered about it not being 3g and I genuinely believe i speak for the majority of people who buy phones.
::sigh::
What's wrong with you people?
Do you have an aversion to reason?
The iPhone is not a regular phone! Regular phones are so indiscernible that you need to have something like 3G to set it apart from the next phone over which is the *exact* same in over other respect. What's the difference between the 2.5G and 3G Razr? Nothing! They look the same (except the 3G is a little thicker!), they have the same features, one just has 3G and the other doesn't.
Now take the iPhone... it's a whole other paradigm. People are tripping over themselves to buy a £269 iPod Touch. You're telling me that having the extra functionality of a camera, speaker, bluetooth and phone - plus data transfer for 2.5G levels - suddenly makes this not worth it?
The iPhone could not do high speed data AT ALL and it would still sell well - you know why? Because there's loads of other things it does, and does well, and that people think are worth the price. I know of folks with iPhones in the US who don't use Safari more than once a week. In fact, there's a good number of people who'd buy it if ALL IT DID was make phone calls with a multi-touch interface! That's how little some folks care about EDGE, 3G, 2G, etc.
If you still don't get it, you never will - at least, not until the sales figures come out and it's a huge success in Europe
How available is 3G in Europe? Is it everywhere? Or only in big cities?
I live in a fairly small city in the US that has AT&T 3G coverage (only place in the state), but as soon as you go out of town that means no more coverage . In town I have ready access to wifi which basically means 3G is useless for me most of the time unless I go on vacation to another part of the country which has 3G coverage (i.e. only a couple times a year)
I live in a fairly small city in the US that has AT&T 3G coverage (only place in the state), but as soon as you go out of town that means no more coverage . In town I have ready access to wifi which basically means 3G is useless for me most of the time unless I go on vacation to another part of the country which has 3G coverage (i.e. only a couple times a year)
Not quite the same. Australia only has 21 million people were as the U.S. has over 300 million people. Most of Australia's people are concentrated in a few key cities, where as in the U.S. we have thousands of cities with several companies all competing against each other to be "the standard". It's just not as easy to do this sort of thing here in the U.S.
Euro != Dollar
If Apple puts the phone onto the market @399 euro (which is much more than $399), and does not add anything to the phone, they can forget me as customer.
1) Everybody has 3G phone in Europe now. (It's almost standard on every phone here and network is very dence.)
2) US-companies should learn not to round there prices with euro=dollar. When the dollar was higher, they didn't do it, so they shouldn't do it now. In the end we Europeans always pay more and we should learn them not to.
@reverie: A customer should not care about VAT. If I would buy it from the USA, I wouldn't pay it either.
@owen-b: £399 euros ... what... you mess around with very differend currency's.
399.00 US Dollar (USD) = 287.56 Euro (EUR) = 198.82 Brits Pond (GBP)
553.62 US Dollar (USD) = 399 Euro (EUR) = 275.87 Brits Pond (GBP)
800.71 US Dollar (USD) = 577.08 Euro (EUR) = £399 Brits Pond (GBP)
Anything more than $475 (=+20% tax) is UNacceptable for me. So Eur 399,- is UNacceptable for me.
If Apple puts the phone onto the market @399 euro (which is much more than $399), and does not add anything to the phone, they can forget me as customer.
1) Everybody has 3G phone in Europe now. (It's almost standard on every phone here and network is very dence.)
2) US-companies should learn not to round there prices with euro=dollar. When the dollar was higher, they didn't do it, so they shouldn't do it now. In the end we Europeans always pay more and we should learn them not to.
@reverie: A customer should not care about VAT. If I would buy it from the USA, I wouldn't pay it either.
@owen-b: £399 euros ... what... you mess around with very differend currency's.
399.00 US Dollar (USD) = 287.56 Euro (EUR) = 198.82 Brits Pond (GBP)
553.62 US Dollar (USD) = 399 Euro (EUR) = 275.87 Brits Pond (GBP)
800.71 US Dollar (USD) = 577.08 Euro (EUR) = £399 Brits Pond (GBP)
Anything more than $475 (=+20% tax) is UNacceptable for me. So Eur 399,- is UNacceptable for me.
i don't have a 3G phone so i can't say how extensive the coverage is here in the UK. but i do know that there's hardly any free wifi around where i am. i read a lot of posters from the US saying that most of the time they are able to use their iphones on free wifi. here, every cafe i go into charges for wifi. even the british library charges members for wifi. the only free place i have come across is in the hayward gallery and the members' bar of the royal festival hall.
Yes the current iPhone is really the new iPhone nano. The one with 16 Gig, GPS and 3G, is the iPhone which will endup eating the $200 markdown.
And the 8-ball says ...... "For sure".
Love that 8-ball, it is always accurate.
Um, i guess you didnt know that Sharp, Toshiba, Panasonic, and even Casio all make cell phones in japan. And they make a LOT of phones. And i think the OP's point was this technology and stuff has been around in cell phones for a while now. And is nothing new to Japan. I don't think it will do as well in japan as it has in america. I also dont think it will do well in Europe w/o help of 3g.
I live in California and I spend a lot of time in Europe. There is a lot of issues with cell service in most of Europe (Scandanavia and Germany are the exception). I have much better service and consistency here in SoCal.
I agree Japan leads the way. But heck there a little teeny island.
No what I prove is that people in Europe [myself included] are used to and quite frankly expect that if they are going to be paying at least £35 a month then they should get a phone of value around £350 for free.
Australia is not the US
First, who paid for it? Second, it's not the same as the US at all. Most of Australia's population is along the eastern and southern coasts, right? Not much in the entire center of the country--and I doubt that the center is equally covered by your new towers. As far as population, you have 20 million, we have 350 million--kind of hard to reach 98% coverage here, wouldn't you say? In the US our population is much more distributed, and many, many, many times more towers would need to be erected to achieve the same coverage. The cost is astronomical.
First, who paid for it? Second, it's not the same as the US at all. Most of Australia's population is along the eastern and southern coasts, right? Not much in the entire center of the country--and I doubt that the center is equally covered by your new towers. As far as population, you have 20 million, we have 350 million--kind of hard to reach 98% coverage here, wouldn't you say? In the US our population is much more distributed, and many, many, many times more towers would need to be erected to achieve the same coverage. The cost is astronomical.
The iPhone is a problem in most European country's (and canada??) because the 3G unlimited data contracts are nonexistent or extremely expensive, the iPhone needs unlimited data so this may well be the deciding factor to choose the next country's. Maybe not taking 3G because its to expensive.
Here in Belgium the GSM can't be coupled to a 2 year contract and sim-lock is also prohibited by law, guess we'll have to wait for the sim-free version in 2012.
Here in Belgium the GSM can't be coupled to a 2 year contract and sim-lock is also prohibited by law, guess we'll have to wait for the sim-free version in 2012.
I am surprised how many people post that they will not get an iPhone for this reason or that and instead settle for disposable mediocrity. In some cases I think it is sour grapes because they are on very tight budgets. Not sure about the others. Oh well, all I know is that everyday I find more reasons why I love mine. I have one friend who still uses a typewriter because he doesn't like computers. To each his own.