We figured it would come to this by mid-week. There is just so much going around about the iPhone (two more sleeps!) that it’s impossible to do a post about each item — lest we ignore the other news. And that just wouldn’t be right, would it? So we’re going to lay down the major stories from this morning and direct you towards some quality reading material. Rate plans announced: Finally, word on what the required plans are going to cost. You’re looking at either $60 or $100 per month, depending on the anytime minutes you need. For a family plan, that’s $80 to $120. That includes unlimited data and 200 text messages. You’d think that they could just make text messaging free with the thing, right? Well, if you want more of those, it’s an option, but it ain’t cheap. If you’re an existing customer, you’ll be hit with a $20 charge to add the data plan — though you get the 200 text messages. Add $10 or $20 more for extra texts. Save your money, wait for a price drop: Remember the ballyhooed Motorola RAZR? When it was released about three years ago, it was $500. Sound familiar? Now you can get one for as little as $50 with a contract. In its first two years, the RAZR sold over 50 million units. So yeah, that whole thing about people shying away from the iPhone because of the price probably isn’t true. There should be a level of concern for Verizon and Sprint: Yeah, we knew this. They’ve been saying for weeks that 2/3 of iPhone inquiries have come from non-AT&T subscribers. ZDNet shares a story of a faithful Mac user who has foregone a BlackBerry so she can use the iPhone for her business. It also notes that Sprint and T-Mobile subscribers are more likely to switch than Verizon subscribers. No way around the data plan: Even if you get the cheapest plan available, that still works out to $1,940 total ($60 per month for 24 months, plus the phone). This article also works out how it may be possible to get an iPhone with your GoPhone account.
the best deal I can work out is (using “Replace a phone on my account with this iPhone”): $500 (iPhone) + $200 (2 1-year $100 cards at 25 cents per minute, includes disposable phone with purchase) + $20/month data * 24 = $1180 for 2 years plus any additional phone time via prepaid cards.Ex-pen-sive. Seth Godin thinks Verizon’s going about this incorrectly: If denigrate the iPhone, you denigrate your (probably former) customer. Seth suggests calculating the cost of the iPhone over the course of a year, and show what you can get on Verizon’s service for that amount. Makes sense to us (to be fair, we’re avid Seth Godin fans).]]>