Apple is making sure that anyone who might like an iPhone will have an easy time finding one by making sure it is in a high amount of retail locations.
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iPhone to Be Available At 2000 Stores
- Thread starter Rich Tate
- Start date
If they have it in 2000 stores on the launch date, they're certainly doing better than I've seen with new Sprint phones, which often take weeks, if not months, to get into all sprint stores (though I sometimes think they do that just so they can keep the sales through telesales, where Is suspect they make more
They expect to ship 10 million units. to bad this wont sell well. I mean who the hell would spend 600 bucks on a fucking phone, I barely will pay more then $50! I predict a flop, and I hope a flop. The last thing we need are phones that cost more then laptops.
Back when the razr first came out, a friend got one for $450 after rebate, and that's just a regular phone. The iphone starts at $500, but offers alot more functionality than just a phone.
tacosareveryyummy
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What a ripoff. I bet apple could fill a bag of dog crap, print "Ipod" on the side, price it at $499.99 and sell a million.
Any one who buys this is either retarded or owns a money tree.
Any one who buys this is either retarded or owns a money tree.
MadJuggla9
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It basically IS a laptop. I'm by no means an Apple fan, and of course they are still money hungry with their extremely high markups.
With online OS, and instant ability to check email right on your phone, save pictures, go through programs much more function than a PDA and so on, $500 doesnt sound THAT bad for an INTRO price.
It covers 90% of what our customer base mainly wants which is internet and email. I think it will drop in price and be on of Apple's more prominent products.
With online OS, and instant ability to check email right on your phone, save pictures, go through programs much more function than a PDA and so on, $500 doesnt sound THAT bad for an INTRO price.
It covers 90% of what our customer base mainly wants which is internet and email. I think it will drop in price and be on of Apple's more prominent products.
a blackjack or something with a 2 year deal is like $100. and a blackjack supports 3g which iphone doesnt.
and it has all that functionality as well. granted it doesnt look as cool and isnt made by apple, but it is actually smaller and more functional.
The fact is this is just another over hyped apple product. It is no where near a laptop. you cant even write or install programs for it. At least you can do that on a CE5 device.
and it has all that functionality as well. granted it doesnt look as cool and isnt made by apple, but it is actually smaller and more functional.
The fact is this is just another over hyped apple product. It is no where near a laptop. you cant even write or install programs for it. At least you can do that on a CE5 device.
Exactly! Far too many critics on these boards seem to think the iPhone has to be targeted at them to be a success. Furthermore, phones tend to drop in price. Not only that, but these phones effectively come with an 8GB iPod Nano. I don't know how good the Nanos are, but I do know that most (all?) cell phones are piss poor DAPs.
Nanos are 200 bucks, so now we're down to 300.00. Still too much for me, but I suspect that will drop by at least a third by Christmas (and if it doesn't, that means that people really REALLY LOVE the iPhone).
Does the black jack have gapless audio playback?
SamuraiInBlack
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I sense a lot of people waiting on second/third generations of this phone, and probably finding aftermarket replacement batteries.
Me personally, I've already got an mp3 player and a phone. I'm set.
Me personally, I've already got an mp3 player and a phone. I'm set.
Correct.
A blackjack is now free at select stores with a 2 year contract. I know most cingular stores offers the black jack at $49 with a two year contract.
Apple is going to find a hard time competing in a market where pda phones are now averaging at $299.... half the price.
As a PDA phone whore (had 6 different BBerries, Blackjack, Treo, etc...), I can say I'm excited about it. Apple always seems to have the most intuitive menu structure. I used my Blackjack for a 2 weeks before I gotr pissed at it and it's retarded workflow. My BBerry Pearl is good, but the Iphone has a wonderful user interface. For some one like me who lives on their mobile email and calendar, I can't wait to get one. It will make my day that much easier, and play music to boot 
I think they're very different markets. AFAIK, most PDA phones are targeted towards business users. At this point, the iPhone is not. I think people buying an iPhone are looking for a cool phone that doubles as a first rate music player.
Some may want an iPod interface. If I was buying it, it'd be because it can do gapless playback (assuming Apple hasn't broken a feature that they finally added last year).
I'm not an Apple fan. Until they added Gapless last year, I always considered them a just another defective DAP.
Furthermore, it's a bit silly to think that the customer that looks for free (or anything under $100.00) is the target for the iPhone.
Regardless, if we had internal documents, I'm sure we'd find that Apple isn't expecting to sell all those iPhones for $500.00. I've also recall an article on [H]'s news page that said there was a good chance that people signing contracts would likely get discounts or rebates.
My guess is that will not happen right away, because I think there's going to be fair number who will buy it at that price.
I wouldn't, but many will. When sales slow, that's when rebates and/or discounts will pop up. People use to pay a fortune for the Razor, and the iPhone certainly looks cooler than a Razr did, IMO.
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heh, I'm just going to be watching the [H]ardOCP news here for the first iPhone bug threads. Random dropped calls or phone restarts, freeze-ups, firmware problems, computer to phone sync issues, etc.
Mr.Krinkle
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Although the IPhone is pretty nice I'd be hard pressed to spend the kind of money they're asking on it, I just recently got a Motorola SLVR L7 which has all the functionality of a Ipod as well as a sweet phone for free through Cingular with my 2 year qualified upgrade. I'd rather wait around to see what kind of reviews people have and maybe wait for 2nd and 3rd gens to be released.
Nasty_Savage
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Considering they give you 2 batteries with it because they suck them dry in no time at all, they should pay YOU to take it.
I'll just keep asking: does it play consecutive files without gaps? Can you put a concert on there with 20 separate tracks and have no gap, pop or click between tracks? This is also known as the Pink Floyd test, since most of their songs on most of their albums segue from track into the next.
Considering the vast majority of stand alone DAPS cannot do this, I'd be SHOCKED if the Motorola can. Aside from that, i'd guess screen size and the amount of flash should also be taken into consideration (but a phone could have a terabyte of flash and it'd be worthless as a player if it couldn't do gapless).
Welcome to the world of PDA phones. A lot of PDA phones comes with two batteries.
You do know you can install your own media player or your own content player to your desire on a PDA phone right?
GJSNeptune
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If you'll drop $500+ on a phone, chances are you have the money for and intent of having the fast internet and other mobile capabilities provided by 3G. The iPhone would not be for you. But maybe you don't care, and just want it because it's an Apple product or because of its seemingly innovative design and interface.
If you want 3G, Motorola is currently developing a competitor, which will include 3G technology.
If you want 3G, Motorola is currently developing a competitor, which will include 3G technology.
Agreed.
Oh whats this? Exactly as I predicted in earlier threads when the iPhone was first announced... now Motorola is up to the challenge. Big communication companies don't just sit on their hands, they are wild beasts when it comes to competition.
Anyways, there are already iphone competitors out there, quite many of them with broad band capabilities and other features.
I haven't looked lately, so things may have changed, but a year ago, Cingular had a tiny 3G footprint. Besides, you're assuming that Apple plans to sell the same exact iPhone for 2 years. I think that's unlikely. A phone that retails for $400 (100-200 with 2yr contract) today will likely be less than half that within a year, if not months.
If this phone clicks iwth phone heads, those things may not matter. I see people on Sprintusers that upgrade phones ALL THE TIME. I've seen people who go through 5+ phones a year. I assume Cingular has customers like that. But for that audience, you're right, they could just swap out software if they have a pda phone.
However, there's another group of customers that would not. They're the typical iPod buyer. When they buy a phone, they want it to work. Sure, they could have installed Rockbox on an iPod to get gapless a year or 2 before Apple supported it, but that doesn't mean that 2 years ago the iPod had gapless playback. And most people don't want to do that. Hell most users weren't even aware it was possible.
In the end, I don't think that this phone is marketed to PDA users. AFAICT, it's not a business phone. It's a phone with what is arguably the best DAP built in and what may or may not be a revolutionary interface.
I understand the skepticism. Hell, I still don't get why people chose the iPod over the Rio Karma (a clearly superior DAP, that Apple has just caught up to 3 or 4 years later), but they did, despite having inferior audio quality and lacking many of the features that the Rio had. Both had excellent and UI. The only thing that the iPod had that was better was it looked cooler. People thought it was sexy. If the iPhone has that, all of its limitations will amount to nada.
InorganicMatter
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Wow, so I should spend $600 more on an iPhone over a free Blackjack because it supports one (useless) features? Big hunk of logic there.
Well, that also ignores other features like:
- touch sensitive
- multitouch
- sensors control screen layout / brightness, etc. automatically
- has ipod built in (ie. this device is *made* to also play music)
InorganicMatter
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- Touch sensitive....wow. So is every other PDA phone out there. ;p
- Ever used a Nintendo DS? You'll want to kill a baby after 10 minutes of trying to use a touchscreen to navigate.
- Sensors...wow! Amazing! One less thing I have control over in my device.
- Yes, and every Windows Mobile device on planet earth has Media Player built into it as well.
I didn't say you should buy shit. But the fact that you think that having playback that isn't broken in useless in a DAP speaks volumes.
InorganicMatter
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A single feature, no matter how vital you think it is, cannot be justified by $600. There had better be a minimum of five highly useful features to justify that price gap.
last I checked, the price was $500.00. Subtract $200.00 for the price of an 8gb nano and you're down to $300.00
By Christmas there will almost certainly be discounts or rebates (just like every other phone).
No other phone comes iwth an iPod. You can say it doesn't matter, but to the mass market, IT DOES. They like the looks. They like the iPod interface and they like the iPod cool factor. I'm pretty sure that iPods allow you to set EQ settings on a per song (and presumably per album) basis. If this thing really is what I believe it is (which is an iPod with a phone), then it will likely have a better audio section than other phones (though unless they've improved alot in the last year or so that's still not as good as it should be).
Many (most?) new head units have direct digital interfaces with iPods. I'd assume that the iPhone will have that as well. How many other phones with music players have that?
In the end, however, emotions more than logic determine what people will buy and being cool and hip are worth the extra cash to some people. If it was logic, the Rio Karma would have killed the iPod. It had an interface that was generally considered just as good as the iPods (different but very well designed), it was cheaper, had longer battery life, had more features, better audio quality and countless other things that made it better.
The vast majority of people have never heard of a Karma. They went to the store and asked for and bought an iPod.