We all know that the Verizon iPhone should be coming as early as tomorrow but at least one analyst is saying that you’ll have to pay a bit more to get their hands on the Apple smartphone. Would you be willing to pay a $50 one-time premium to get the Verizon iPhone?
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the iPhone [on Verizon] doesn’t cost $50 more,” said Brian Marshall, an analyst with Gleacher & Co., told ComputerWorld.
That means the lowest Verizon iPhone model would come in at around $250 with a new, two-year contract. By contrast, AT&T users can get the Apple smartphone for $199 with a new, contract.
The additional cost could come from the more expensive CDMA components, which come with costly patent costs from Qualcomm. I’m of the firm belief that Big Red would be crazy to give AT&T any ammunition to advertise its version of the iPhone, as the extra $50 per user will be a pittance compared to the millions and millions of new customers that will be locked into new, two-year contracts.
AT&T is already taking trash about the slow experience that a Verizon iPhone on the CDMA network would provide, so it doesn’t take a genius to see it saying you’re paying more and getting less by going to Big Red.
Still, each AT&T iPhone is subsidized by at least $400 a pop and users may be frustrated enough to not care about that extra $50. That would definitely help Verizon’s margins in the short term and $50 is actually a drop in the bucket for end users when you consider how much you pay for service over two years.
So, it looks like the Verizon iPhone day has finally come upon us and I know many of you are actually giddy about this. Not me, though, as my next phone has to have a daul-core processor, front-facing camera and have 4G access, so I think the Droid Bionic is much more appealing than Apple’s phone. That’s just me, though.
[Via ComputerWorld