Take this with a grain of salt, but Fortune’s Scott Moritz has filed a report claiming that AT&T will subsidize the price of the hotly awaited 3G iPhone down to start at $199 with a two-year agreement, which would be a clear sign that the company is serious about starting to move some massive numbers of the device when it drops in June.
There are definitely parts of the story that I don’t buy — I don’t think Apple is going to go 8 and 16 gig on the new iPhone, let alone “8-gigabit-memory and 16-gigabit-memory,” and the pricing strategy only makes sense if the iPhone is non-exclusive to AT&T. If Apple’s selling the 3G iPhone unlocked at Apple Stores for $200 more, this makes sense. If not, this is just bizarre.
Thoughts? I really hope we see a 32-gigabyte model of the 3G iPhone – that makes it not just a nano replacement for me, but an actual iPod replacement.
FORTUNE: Techland AT&T to cut the price of Apple’s new iPhone
Thanks, Matt!
Tags: iphone, rumor, at&t, speculation
Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete’s particular Apple avocations are both around design–interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!
