Speaking of the iPhone, lost amidst all the hoopla over the supposedly huge price cut is news that, alas, things aren't quite what they seem. First, the iPhone 3G is actually more expensive than its predecessor despite the up-front price cut, because the monthly cost is dramatically higher, especially if you use the SMS feature. Second, analysts are now warning that Apple's concessions to AT&T and other carriers, which led to the price cut, are a huge step back for consumers because they "undermine progress towards an open network future."
The theory is that the wireless market is moving to a more open model in which devices and services can be mixed and matched in ways that are currently impossible, particularly in the United States. But by allowing AT&T to subsidize the iPhone, Apple is in fact locking consumers into long-term contracts that come with huge financial penalties if they try to leave early. This paradigm is exactly the opposite of the open model and is, in fact, exactly the way things have been done in the US cell phone business all along. "We are now right back where we were before, in a world where customers expect carriers to underwrite device costs, and where carriers therefore maintain the high costs of retailing as well as network operations," Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said. "The short-term revenue and share boost of the old and familiar subsidy model is like a drug."
Več o tem tule: http://windowsitpro.com/article/article ... -2008.html
Evo še domač komentar:
Of course the old and familiar subsidy model is like a drug here in Slovenia, too. However, we have a very fast-growing fixed and mobile operator T-2, which does not play to the tune of ages-old short-term market-exhaustion practices, thereby bringing new and refreshing dynamics to the market, which is sending state owned and controlled operators and its friendly quasi-operators into a state of panic. Each user at T-2 has all the freedom that one can have at the lowest possible price on the market. T-2 will seek to extend this model into the wider European context in the following years, which has a very clear goal: the lowering of high prices of telecommunications services in most European countries!
, ker si kar mislim komu gre iPhone najbolj v nos 
> UMTS
