IPhone 3G pricing in Australia - Some thoughts

Posted by stuart as Uncategorized

I wrote some time ago about why I wasn’t going be be sucked in by the hype, and buy an Iphone. The reasoning behind this was that my ageing Nokia 6280 did most of the things that the IPhone, in its original incarnation offered.

Well the game’s changed.

There are a couple of features on the new IPhone 3G that have my head swimming with the possibilities, namely the push email, contact, and calendar facilities, and the data synch offered as part of the mobileme.com service.

These are game changers for anyone who runs multiple devices, and needs to keep them in synch without wanting to bugger around manually synchronising stuff.

I love the idea that I update a contact in Outlook on my desktop, and BLAMO! it’s updated on the IPhone. Waiting for an important email, but need to leave the office? That sucker’s gonna send me the email to the IPhone, and I get it at the same time it arrives on my laptop.

I know I can do this stuff on a Blackberry, but have you seen the price of those suckers?

Now on to how the whole shebang might work in Australia:

Australian ISP’s, and even more so, Mobile network providers, have a history of gouging their customers for every kilobyte of data they use. Especially our main carrier, Telstra. This will get interesting when people start using their IPhones the way they are intended to be used - an always connected device which has data PUSHED to it, rather than just a data retrieval device. This is going to add up real quick here on these Australian networks.

Given that Apple have priced the two models of the 3G Iphone at US$199 and US$299 respectively, and the fact that the Australian dollar is sitting at around US$0.95 at the moment, the carriers are going to be hard pressed to sell the units for much more than AU$250 and AU$350 respectively (yes I know it should be AU$210 and AU$320 respectively, but this is Australia we are talking about, if there’s a profit premium to be paid for technology, we’re going to be paying it).

I’ve done a few quick sums, based on the 3G carrier I use (Three), to see what the pricing might look like when the phones arrive on the 11th of July.

Let’s say we’re signing up for a two year contract, which is the norm here in Australia, and we’re buying the 8GB Iphone at the (Australian inflated) price of $250. The phone price is ammortised over the contract period.

Let’s also take into account that I can buy data from Three at the rate of 1GB/month for $15.

OK, here goes:

Three sell the Sony Ericsson Z610i off the shelf for $249, around the same price I reckon the IPhone 8GB should be here in Australia. I can walk into a Three shop and get this phone for no money down on a $29 cap, which gives me a bucketload of free calls / sms etc.

So let’s say we can get our Iphone no money down on a $29 monthly cap, let’s go get us some data allowance…

Three have what are probably the most generous mobile data plans in Australia (which isn’t saying much). I can grab 1GB of data a month for AU$15. If I really want to go nuts, I can get 6GB for $49. I’ll stick with the 1GB for now, for the sake of the argument.

Ok, so far we’re paying $29 a month for the phone and network access, and $15 for some data allowance. Now we need to pay for Apple’s mobileme service.

The mobileme service is priced at US$100/year. This might seem a little pricey, but it’s the whole point of getting the IPhone in the first place - remember, we’re talking PUSH email, contacts, and calendar here - right from Outlook on my PC.

Let’s call the mobileme cost $8 a month. So we’re up to around $53 a month ($30-odd for the phone and network access, $15 for the data, and $8 for mobileme).

I currently spend $30 a month on my phone, and $15 for mobile data for when I work on the road. The extra $8 for the features i can now get from the 3G IPhone is a no-brainer.

Australian telco’s - you are on notice. Anything that goes wildly outside the above pricing constitues nothing other than outright price gouging.