Americans stuck with an AT&T only Apple iPhone 3G until 2010

Davey Winder
Sunday, 03 August 2008 03:57

Your IT - Mobility

Apple iPhone 3G users in the USA will be able to choose any carrier as long as it is AT&T until 2010. This, we understand, was the cost of the American mobile service provider agreeing to pay Apple heavy and punishing iPhone 3G handset subsidies...

When AT&T were announced as the only US network for their original iPhone, the terms of the deal with Apple included network exclusivity until the year 2009. At which point it would be able to start offering the device to other carriers.

With the launch of the iPhone 3G, AT&T were only too well aware that the playing field was levelling as far as the mobile phone market is concerned. The truth of the matter is that the US mobile phone market is fast approaching saturation point.

Every American who wants a mobile phone has, pretty much, already got one. A situation which makes adding new subscribers a difficult proposition, unless carriers effectively poach them from one another. Of course, waving a shiny new iPhone 3G at the consumer doesn't hurt either.

And that, according to an article in USA Today, is where the extension to the original Apple/AT&T agreement comes in. Referring to the original 2009 cut off point it says: "If Apple exercised that clause, AT&T would have lost one of its biggest points of leverage with customers — exclusive access to the iPhone. Nailing the extension is a very big deal."

Not that AT&T head honcho Randall Stephenson is commenting on the record regarding that contract in the pages of USA Today, but he certainly seemed happy to confirm how important the $199 price tag for the iPhone 3G was for both AT&T and Apple.

Without breaking the magic $200 price point, the iPhone 3G would simply never have broken into the magic new demographic of consumers that it has.

Has Apple just decided to take the money and run, stuffing the consumer in the process? Story continues on page 2...

CONTINUES