Sprint today quietly dropped the price of the 16GB iPhone 4S to $149.99 with a two-year contract. That’s a $50 or 25 percent discount, which is a big deal considering its an Apple product. (If you want to see an Apple product on sale, avoid blinking.) Plus, a 25 percent discount is pretty much unheard of when they are on sale.
The new pricing on Sprint applies to all storage capacities of the iPhone 4S as well. The 16GB model is $149.99, 32GB is $249.99, and the 64GB is $349.99. It doesn’t appear to be a temporary sale either; it’s the real deal.
This surreal price drop on the iPhone has to mean one of two things. The first reason would be Sprint wants to sell more iPhones. Period. It very well could be as simple as that — Sprint is, after all, the least popular choice among consumers for buying an iPhone of the three U.S. carriers that sell it. The lower price gives it an advantage over AT&T and Verizon, both of which are still selling the iPhone 4S starting at the standard $199.99 pricing.
The other scenario would be that Apple wants to sell more iPhones before the next-generation iPhone comes out next month, at least according to rumors. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer did admit at the recent quarterly earnings call that all the rumors about the upcoming iPhone are hurting sales of the current model. If this is the case though, I see no reason why AT&T and Verizon wouldn’t have a sale going on either.
Disregarding speculation, if you couldn’t care less about an imminent new iPhone, now is a pretty good time to pick up a 4S at Sprint.