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

Davey Winder
Sunday, 03 August 2008 04:57

Your IT - Mobility

What surprises me somewhat is that Apple agreed to the golden handcuffs deal, preventing it from getting the iPhone out to a wider market through greater choice of network operator. It seems to have decided that it was in its best interest to take the money, around $300 per handset in subsidy.

Yes, keeping the price down is important but surely market forces would have ensured that if AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon were slugging it out for consumer attention?

The danger being that with many users effectively locked out of iPhone 3G ownership for another year, because they do not want to switch to AT&T for whatever reason, it leaves an extra year for other handset manufacturers to woo them with their iPhone clones...