Here’s how close the iPhone 5 release date is to being a reality:
Best Buy is giving older
iPhones away, and
Apple is allowing it. Actually, you missed it: the free iPhone-a-thon (with two year
contract, naturally) was yesterday and it was only for the aging 3GS, with the
flagship iPhone 4 still (for now) mostly holding its flagship
price points. But the desire on the part of Apple to dump the inventory of the circa-2009 iPhone, which is still around as the
bargain-bin model for now, to the point of actually invoking the word “free” shows just how close the iPhone 5 is. Apple had previously allowed
AT&T to blow out refurbished iPhone models for nine dollars, but this represents the first Apple-approved foray into “free iPhone” territory. It’s a byproduct both of the increasing commoditization of the overall smartphone market and of the continued iPhone 5 delays, which have the iPhone 4 still in pole position for far longer than was expected or apparently intended. And it could be a sign of things to come, not just in terms of model numbers but their price tags as well.
Whether the iPhone 4 survives past the release date of the iPhone 5 is still up in the air. Apple can opt to keep the 4 around as the new bargain-bin model, pricing it at $99 or $49 in contrast to the $199 entry price point of the iPhone 5. Or Apple could decide that the iPhone 4, which has been around for nearly fifteen months, has seen three incarnations in the original AT&T iPhone 4, later Verizon iPhone 4, and bonus-time white iPhone 4, has seen its day come and go. Both the Verizon and AT&T variants of the iPhone 4 could bite the dust in favor of a lower-end iPhone 5 variant, resulting in an all-5 iPhone lineup spanning the price range from $299 to $199 to – dare we say it – free. There’s nothing to stop Apple from offering either the iPhone 4 or a new baby-spec iPhone 5 as a free-with-contract option, so long as it can recoup the cost from the carrier through the course of the contract…
12/03/2011 01:21:00 PM
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