Although we have seen many iPhones in the streets of Madrid and many other Spanish cities, until now people were buying them in the US and then unblocking them. Now it is available in Spain and it is actually 3G, so what is my reaction?
It is known that I am not a huge fan of the iPhone as I keep seeing them working with propietary DRM and using the bundle iTunes / iPhone / iPod to continue its ruling of the music industry while not bringing value to most of the value chain. However I was eager to find out about the subsidy levels once it has been announced that it could reach almost a 0 final price, the new pricing plans will be set into the market and how the bundle Telefonica / Apple will display its value proposition
The answer is the overall proposition is really really expensive for most of the average users or the content eager segment (apart from professionals).
The monthly minimum commitment for voice and data together has its lowest offering in 24EUR per month (with only 200 Mbytes in terms of data, after using those any additional browsing speed is GPRS!!) with a device cost of 299 Eur (or 269 with portability), hardly an attractive price today and you are requested a 2 year commitment so enjoying the iPHONE costs you more almost 900 EUR to start with or 2,000 EUR if you really want a free iPHONE ( 60 EUR for voice and 25 EUR for 1G of Data hmmmmm? Actually I have the monthly commitmnet only includes national calls so you may have to pay even more. And by the way add VAT to all those prices
By the way, no Bluetooth, camera 2 Megapixels, no MMS, well I guess 3G and the apple brand have a price, right Steve?
By the way it does not seem that I am the only one on this boat
http://www.xatakamovil.com/2008/07/10-iphone-precios-en-espana
Funny enough we are about to launch within 2 weeks a very attractive digital entertainment value proposition with one of the leading MVNOs in the market, so we will see how both sides behave?
This is a nice example of branding vs functionality.
ReplyDeleteI am a long time apple follower (from the 80s....) but I do not find any value on the iPhone.
For professionals it is not yet as functional as a Blackberry (lets see what we get with Snow Leopard)
For consumers t is expensive and proprietary...
You could argue that the iPod was th e same. For me the better integration of the iPod made up for the price differential, not sure it will work like this for the iPhone.