more on VF’s iphone pricing
OK, so I’ve been thinking a but more after posting this. And, at the risk of getting lynched, I don’t think the pricing is that bad. The data caps should be a bit higher – 500meg / 1GB / 3GB maybe – or put something in there so, at least initially, people don’t get massive data bills, or mix and match and have the price of the phone based on the plan cost, eg:
200min + 200txt + 3GB data = $120/month = iphone costs $350. etc.
100min + 500txt + 200meg data = $80/month = iphone costs $500 etc.
Personally, I’d use very few minutes, quite a lot of texts (100-150), and a fair chunk of data. So the low end plans, which is priced about right, gets me good for calls and texts, but is suckey for data. Which is why I like the £30 O2 plan (150 texts, 75 mins and unlimited data) – thats the plan I’m going to get on the weekend, assuming there is still stock!!
On the data side of things, I wonder if people are over-reacting. While I think 200meg is too low when it has a hard cap on it, how much data do you REALLY think you are going to use on this thing? I worked out how much data I use at home, if I remove the heavy stuff like downloading from TV shows from iTunes and <ahem> other sources. And really, it’s fuck all – a 3GB plan would be more than enough for two of us, and we do a lot of stuff which we’d never do on an iPhone over the air. As it stands, I use about 40GB/month, most of which comes from iTunes!
I don’t see a bittorrent client being a popular option for the iPhone. At least not over the cellular network, anyway. It’s too slow to download a CSI episode (450meg) from iTunes over that link – tho over WiFi it’s quite feasible.
As for the device prices – yup, they are high, and they are not $199 (well, $250 once it’s translated). But Vodafone hasn’t sub’ed a phone for a while, so maybe they are a little cautious about it. Based on the actual cost of the device – I’d guess around $1100 to $1500 NZ – it’s not a bad deal.
So, pricing isn’t ideal, and it’s not FREE, so people will complain, but I dunno if it’s that bad either. I was an opportunity for VF to get a lot of people on it – converting from Telecom, too, no doubt – but they have lost that. Be interesting to see how it all pans out.
Exactly. The problem has always been with the data cap. The IPhone is suppose to the “THE ONE” that changes how the world uses mobile data. IPhone owners are supposed to be able to browse the net anywhere, enjoy watching online video, listening to music, keeping connected via Email (Push or Sync) etc. etc.
But with such a pathetic data cap, I suspect many non technical, but trendy users who doesn’t really understand data cap will ended up with a massive bill comes the end of the first IPhone month. Remember those horror stories where some families with teenagers received a 5 figure Jetstream bill from Telecom when DSL first came out in NZ?
I personally think the subsidised Hardware pricing is very reasonable (for New Zealand standard). and I will happily pay $80 a month for 500MB of data, 150 anytime national minutes, 60 txt (I don’t use txt that much). But I really doubt this kind of deal will become reality since Mark has already pointed out that it is very very expensive to bring data down to NZ. [/sarcasm]