Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear
Here we go again. The iPhone costs $1,000,000 (or £500,000 in proper money), blah blah blah. It does not. The iPhone, ladies and gentlemen, costs precisely £269 in the UK for the 8GB model. Thats it. Done. Not a penny more.
What you then do is pay O2 £35 per month for an 18-month contract which delivers you 600 voice minutes, 500 texts, unlimited EDGE across O2's network and unlimited WiFi across The Cloud, bundled Visual Voicemail. Thats it.
Now, if you compare any other £35 per month contract you will find that the minutes and texts are roughly the same. But you will not, for £35pm, get bundled data and (these days) voicemail. So the O2 contract is pretty good value compared to what else there is around in the UK now.
That Apple may get a revenue share of the £35 does not mean that you are paying anything more for the iPhone. Remember, it still cost you £269, not a penny more. If O2 are daft enough to revenue share with Apple that is their lookout. What would all you naysayers like? O2 to give you the contract with all that stuff in it for £25? Why should they? No other UK mobile network operator delivers that value for money proposition.
Why unlock the iPhone? With today's O2 contract tariff for the iPhone one has to wonder why indeed. It does not make sense to even bother anymore.
Jailbreak? Again, why bother? With the release of the SDK we can expect as much ISV apps as on any other PDA, Smartphone WHY.
Stopsign because I wish that those that peddle the misinformation about the iPhone cost of ownership would give it up. They're wrong and they know it.