Apple may be brewing up a pre-paid iPhone for October. Wednesday, Sprint-owned Virgin Mobile announced starting in October it was dropping ‘unlimited’ data plans for prepaid customers in favor of ‘unlimited with throttling.’
“Beginning in October 2011, Virgin Mobile will also move to reduce data speeds when a customer’s data usage exceeds 2.5GB in a month,” Sprint announced. Virgin will still offer unlimited prepaid 3G, though.
The throttling is expected to affect “fewer than 3 percent of Virgin Mobile USA customers,” the carrier assured. However, the change could mean slower page loads, file downloads and media streaming.
The news follows a Tuesday report that AT&T in October will change its iPhone insurance plans, due to a new tier of phones. The change suggests the carrier is also making plans for a prepaid Apple handset. Last week, Verizon Wireless also dropped its unlimited data plan.
Earlier this year, Apple COO Tim Cook said the tech giant was not ceding any market, understand pricing was a big factor in the prepaid arena.
Apple is expected to announce a new handset in August or September, perhaps including a prepaid option.
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.
18 responses to “Will Apple Start Selling A Pre-Paid iPhone Through Sprint in October”
DAMN YOUUUU CARRIERSSSS!!!
Your missing a question mark on your title.
It would make sense to open the device up to all of the carriers. More sales revenue for Apple, more users buying Apps, and taking a bite out of Android.
-Chris
http://friendsofmac.net
You’re missing an apostrophe and a ‘e’ on your
you’re missing an apostrophe before your r and an e after it
but I also missed the question mark
It won’t take a bite out of Android, It would be more like a speed bump for Android. ;)
Mr Wilfred Apple made a large investment in this scheme. Don’t screw it up for him.
Good way to dump the remaining iPhone 3s and maybe low end 4s. Low purchase price, reasonable fees, and a 12-18 month lock-in. I might actually buy one.
In Knowing Your Value: Women, Money and Getting What You’re Worth, Mika Brzezinski borrows from her experiences as co-host of a morning talk show and interviews a wide range of professional women such as director Nora Ephron, Facebook’s Cheap Jordan Shoes Sandberg, and broadcaster Joy Behar about their experiences in moving up in their careers. Knowing Your Value also blends personal stories with the latest research about women in the workplace. The end result is a brutally honest and Jordan shoes cheap witty exploration of the roadblocks and pitfalls that are unique to women. Brzezinsky provides an in-depth look at how professional women achieve recognition and financial success in an unbalanced workforce that often overlooks their worth Michael Jordan Shoes.
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5