Japan’s Softbank Giving Away iPhones

Japan mobile carrier SoftBank Mobile has begun offering a free 8GB iPhone to entice customers to sign-up for lucrative two-year data plans.

As part of its “iPhone for Everybody Campaign,” Softbank is giving away the iPhone, which previously sold for $238.21 in Japan.

Through May, the carrier is also discounting the 16GB iPhone, charging just $4.96 per month, or $119.11 over the two-year contract.

When SoftBank began selling iPhones in July of last year, the 16GB handset carried a $238.21 price tag.

The program is just the latest offering consumers discounted iPhones. Earlier this week, electronics retailer Best Buy began offering iPhones for up to $100 off.

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The discounts come as both retailers and carriers look to the June Worldwide Developer Conference, at which many believe Apple could unveil a new iPhone version.

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Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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http://coreminimalist.blogspot.com Dann
Not too surprising that they’re trying this. Two-year contracts are like a Luddite sentence to any Japanese cellphone user. All it means is that not enough Japanese want the iPhone, which isn’t surprising considering it lacks a ton of features common to most all Japanese phones.