Gone are the days when IPhone was available at 4 price-points (with new iPhone contract, with other new Orange contract, with existing Orange contract and de-blocked). Orange today offers 8gb/16gb with new iPhone contract only at 399/499 or the 16gb de-blocked at 749 [BTW "de-blocked" phones will only accept other French SIM cards, not DE/GB SIMs].
By contrast Nokia's N82 currently retails at 599 and the HTCp4550 at 679 on the same basis.
Adding insult to injury I also picked up Orange's iPhone pricing leaflet; it now runs to a massive 37 pages of micro-type.
Yet side by side Orange and parent SFR (France Telecom) now offer every component of the iPhone service (without the hardware functionality of course) in more compelling packages through traditional sales models - WiFi hotspots, 3G-dongle services, calling plans; anyone looking for a business communications package will find the iPhone on the poor side of Orange/SFR's offerings.
Additionally SFR is now offering an AsusEEE + 3G dongle for under 600 [12m contract inc hardware].
So when Orange say they didn't reach 100,000 sales in three months but were not sad about it maybe we can see why - they planned and are effectively killing iPhone off in the (local) market, yet using the halo-effect to co-promote their established offerings.
[As a footnote Orange/SFR has a track-record of being quite good at this; they've all but killed off Skype in France by the combined thrust of offering (almost) free VoIP themselves whilst strangling non-proprietary VoIP uplink bandwidth to kill the competition. Don't we all love monopolies?]
By contrast Nokia's N82 currently retails at 599 and the HTCp4550 at 679 on the same basis.
Adding insult to injury I also picked up Orange's iPhone pricing leaflet; it now runs to a massive 37 pages of micro-type.
Yet side by side Orange and parent SFR (France Telecom) now offer every component of the iPhone service (without the hardware functionality of course) in more compelling packages through traditional sales models - WiFi hotspots, 3G-dongle services, calling plans; anyone looking for a business communications package will find the iPhone on the poor side of Orange/SFR's offerings.
Additionally SFR is now offering an AsusEEE + 3G dongle for under 600 [12m contract inc hardware].
So when Orange say they didn't reach 100,000 sales in three months but were not sad about it maybe we can see why - they planned and are effectively killing iPhone off in the (local) market, yet using the halo-effect to co-promote their established offerings.
[As a footnote Orange/SFR has a track-record of being quite good at this; they've all but killed off Skype in France by the combined thrust of offering (almost) free VoIP themselves whilst strangling non-proprietary VoIP uplink bandwidth to kill the competition. Don't we all love monopolies?]