[SteveHoward999]

Originally Posted by haesslich

If they'd sold the phone by itself for $500 or so, and made it quad-band PLUS 3G capable (reducing the need to have separate phones for EU/Asia and North America), they'd probably be in an even better position. It's a bit like if they'd sold the iPod back in 2000 but tied it to AOL so you had to get an AOL membership to download music and ALSO had to pay extra data fees because you'd have to dial up AOL to get to the iTunes store... and couldn't rip your own music. I suspect that the iPod would've tanked if they'd tied it the way the iPhone is currently locked down to one provider.

Yeah but you know fine well this is targetted at the US maket first, then the rest of the world will have to be second. That's US-centric shot-sightedness so far as anyone else is concerned. But it's not as if the US market is not big enough to turn a healthy profit :-)

Plus creating a phone for the World market is rather more hassle - multi-language, multi phone systems, different legal requirements on warranties ... there's a whole slew of things that we will probably never know about and (hopefully) never need to care about to make a device for the wold market, instead of the domestic one.

Also, the US market is used to being tied into their cell-service providers and a closed market is going to be much easier for Apple to work with than a wide open one. As a consumer I think the deal with Cingular sucks. But from a business perspective, I think they did the right thing for themselves.

Apple are going to get a mountain of free advertising over the next few months. Not just because the press has it's lips firmly attached to Apple's rosey behind, but also because Cingular is about to be revamped as AT&T, so you can bet the iPhone is never going to be out of the limelight for 6 months solid before it hits the streets.

[SteveHoward999]

Originally Posted by haesslich

If they'd sold the phone by itself for $500 or so, and made it quad-band PLUS 3G capable (reducing the need to have separate phones for EU/Asia and North America), they'd probably be in an even better position. It's a bit like if they'd sold the iPod back in 2000 but tied it to AOL so you had to get an AOL membership to download music and ALSO had to pay extra data fees because you'd have to dial up AOL to get to the iTunes store... and couldn't rip your own music. I suspect that the iPod would've tanked if they'd tied it the way the iPhone is currently locked down to one provider.

Yeah but you know fine well this is targetted at the US maket first, then the rest of the world will have to be second. That's US-centric shot-sightedness so far as anyone else is concerned. But it's not as if the US market is not big enough to turn a healthy profit :-)

Plus creating a phone for the World market is rather more hassle - multi-language, multi phone systems, different legal requirements on warranties ... there's a whole slew of things that we will probably never know about and (hopefully) never need to care about to make a device for the wold market, instead of the domestic one.

Also, the US market is used to being tied into their cell-service providers and a closed market is going to be much easier for Apple to work with than a wide open one. As a consumer I think the deal with Cingular sucks. But from a business perspective, I think they did the right thing for themselves.

Apple are going to get a mountain of free advertising over the next few months. Not just because the press has it's lips firmly attached to Apple's rosey behind, but also because Cingular is about to be revamped as AT&T, so you can bet the iPhone is never going to be out of the limelight for 6 months solid before it hits the streets.

[haesslich]

Originally Posted by SteveHoward999

Yeah but you know fine well this is targetted at the US maket first, then the rest of the world will have to be second. That's US-centric shot-sightedness so far as anyone else is concerned. But it's not as if the US market is not big enough to turn a healthy profit :-)

Plus creating a phone for the World market is rather more hassle - multi-language, multi phone systems, different legal requirements on warranties ... there's a whole slew of things that we will probably never know about and (hopefully) never need to care about to make a device for the wold market, instead of the domestic one.

Also, the US market is used to being tied into their cell-service providers and a closed market is going to be much easier for Apple to work with than a wide open one. As a consumer I think the deal with Cingular sucks. But from a business perspective, I think they did the right thing for themselves.

Apple are going to get a mountain of free advertising over the next few months. Not just because the press has it's lips firmly attached to Apple's rosey behind, but also because Cingular is about to be revamped as AT&T, so you can bet the iPhone is never going to be out of the limelight for 6 months solid before it hits the streets.

Well, there's going to be ONE major issue - if the data plans are outrageous, I can see the iPhone becoming a 'lame duck' along the likes of the Newton and Pippin, followed only by the faithful who are willing to mortgage their houses and sell their children to the Russian mafia in order to keep the phones.

Now, if they're $40/mo, I can see people accepting that a lot more easily, which would help adoption of the phone somewhat. I do wonder how they'll do overseas, which is where the bulk of the GSM market is (1.4 billion users in EU and Asia versus maybe the 86 million GSM users all across North America, according to some of the statistics I've seen on the GSM Association website). Of that 86 million, approximately 50 million of them are Cingular users, from what I recall - there are about 5 million Cingular users still 'stuck' on TDMA phones, out of their 55-60 million total customers. Of course, if even just 5% of those subscribers can afford the iPhone, that's about 2.5 million iPhones sold that first year alone... which would beat the 1.4 or so million iPods sold from 2001-2002 (refer to Wikipedia for those figures).

As you suggest, the North American market really IS pocket change.