Monday, October 15, 2007

Leaving the network behind

Unlike David Pogue, who stuck with Verizon's superior network despite being impressed with the iPhone and being a Mac user, I've switched to AT&T. The only fault I could find in my old service provider was their high cost but it's arguable that it was worth it.

I found out that not only does Apple not offer any sort of corporate or educational discount on the device, AT&T does not offer anything in the way of corporate discount on the monthly service for iPhone, usually a nice 13%. This goes in line with an estimate from Morgan Stanley analyst Katiey Huberty's estimate that Apple receives a one-time payment of $150 per customer and a recurring $5 a month. That certainly leaves no room for any discounts.

Links and corrections to come.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

finally I was captured by IPhone.
I have one now.

Will said...

How did you get an iPhone in HK?

Nevertheless, the announcement of an official SDK validates our iPhone purchase decisions!

Anonymous said...

I got one on auction yahoo hk.
I paid and took one brick home. There was no receipt, no invoice, nor warranty. Just that my price was close to the original USD499.

Will said...

Wow... but you have the serial number! Does your iPhone qualify for the $100 credit?

Will said...

Oh, sorry. I forgot you needed a working number...

Anonymous said...

My one is a week 41 product, so it should be sold at Apple at 399.

it is really interesting to play with this handheld. Expanded input for Chinese on iPhone:
http://www.iphone.org.hk/cgi-bin/ch/topic_show.cgi?id=1319

before SDK.

Will said...

Ah, yeah, I expect the Chinese input will come soon. They already have Japanese input.

Unknown said...

My uncle who dislikes LG tried to talk me into getting an iPhone until he realised it cost an extra $50USD a month for the data plan and I already pay for my parent's.

ATT is only good for US mobile coverage but it's crap for the rest of the world as seen by constant network congestion when I tried to call around TW with ATT roaming...

Apple needs to sell an unlocked brick sometime for the Asia-Pacific market...

Will said...

Actually, if you're an existing AT&T subscriber, I think you could just add $20 for the unlimited EDGE data transfers and 200 text messages.