Subscribe by EmailCould we be about to see a pre-paid iPhone?
May 7, 2008 by Mark O'Neill |By Mark O’Neill
Italy could prove to be the turning point for the Apple iPhone. Vodafone and Telecom Italia have announced that they have both won contracts to bring the iPhone to Italy - the first time that two competing networks will sell the iPhone in the same country at the same time - and this may have a knock-on effect elsewhere in other iPhone markets.
Vodafone will also sell the iPhone in nine other countries where the customers prefer pre-pay phones instead of contracts - and we’re talking BIG countries here such as Australia and New Zealand, not poor Third World ones. So if Australia and New Zealand rolls out pre-paid iPhones to satisfy their customers, how long before they reach the US, UK and Europe? Not long I imagine. And how will Steve Jobs feel about his beloved iPhone being used with top-up pre-pay cards?
My own personal feeling is that pre-pay iPhones would actually do well here in Europe where sales are actually very disappointing and the price of an iPhone has been slashed very heavily to try to boost sales. Here in Germany, the price of an iPhone has plummeted from an initial EUR 400 down to EUR 100 and STILL they are not selling. But imagine if they were to be sold with a pre-pay card instead? I would immediately buy one and I’m sure others would too, if they weren’t handcuffed with an expensive long-term contract.
But with the Skype phone out and a Google Android phone due to come out soon, I can’t help but wonder if Apple have missed the boat. They may have had their moment and blew it by bringing out their phone with too high a price and too restrictive a contract. Now it’s Skype and Google’s turn to swoop in. What do you think?
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Since you are not a German citizen, T-Mobile may also decline to sell you the contract since they figure you may do a runner back to Denmark…
Still, you can go into an O2 store (in the UK) and get free net access until they chuck you out
*They have 2 or 3 out on display for you to have a go on)
However, the money is in the contract, which lasts (I believe), for 18 months, so that’s 18 x 35 = £630 ($1260).
To bring even part of that income to the pre-pay market, they’ll have to make the handset itself a real moneyspinner. That’s how it works in pre-pay - you can buy very cheap ‘top-up’ handsets, but they’re always bottom of the range. I would estimate a pre-pay iPhone - assuming it’s the actual, fully-featured model, and not specialist for that market - will be around £500 ($1000). And the pre-pay market is typically made-up of people who can’t afford or get the credit for a contract phone. So it wouldn’t sell to anyone apart from a few.
However, what would happen is iPhone crime would go through the roof. If you put that out there, and make it available to ‘the people’, but charge them out of the market, they’ll be stealing them left, right and centre.
Happy days.
The telecom revolution in India/China have boomed like never before. I do agree that it is still a developing nation, but in one of our company’s US visitor’s words — “Man, you gotta go to the deserts of Rajasthan. There are villages without water, electricity, and good roads ; but my US based cell phone, with international roaming, had 4 bars signal strength”.