Well, the other shoe finally dropped along with Apple’s stock price and if you want the best iPhone with the best phone service it is going to cost you.  While this clearly isn’t a problem if you are a billionaire, for the rest of us signing the related contract will likely be an “Oh my God, $3000!!!” moment.   

Apple iPhone gallery...

Most folks will likely opt for a less expensive plan and they range from $60 to $100; likely, most will pick the $80 plan with 900 minutes (those extra minutes can be expensive). That’s 30 minutes per day in a 30 day month, so I’ll bet a lot of those folks get really surprised by the bill they actually get if they use their cellphone during business hours. (In case you did the math that’s only around $2500 plus overages, taxes, breakage, and the cost of replacing the battery in 12 months).  

Advice, if you get one, learn to speak quickly and be brief, but I agree with a number of my peers this much money, for what basically is a Beta product, just seems insane.
   
This cost is one of the reasons this class of phone hasn’t been that popular with consumers except when connected with really aggressive price plans. To consumers, $2500+ is what they would typically pay for a car for their kid and not a phone. This is why most smart phones are actually supplied and paid for by businesses today.   


Is Microsoft helping Apple cut cost 50%?

Now, Microsoft Mobile is rumored to be helping Apple make future versions of the iPhone acceptable to business and, over the next few months as the iPhone goes through its second and third generations, you’ll see if the rumor is true.   If this effort is successful, a future version of the iPhone may be acceptable to business and will be able to move into the market much like a RIM Blackberry, Palm Treo, T-Mobile Dash, and Samsung Blackjack have.  

Microsoft is on an aggressive interoperability campaign right now and is also working with a number of Linux vendors. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were very cordial when they got together a few weeks ago and Steve has to realize that it will be very difficult to move a $3000 phone package, if folks can’t expense it or pay for it with pre-tax dollars like the other phones in this category.  

Using pretax dollars is, in effect, like getting up to 50% off of the phone even for small businesses and, for a $3000 cost that $1500 difference could help in selling these phones a great deal.   

Let’s put this in perspective: When you factor in the full price of an iPhone and $100 monthly service, you can buy the hot new Dell M1330 XPS Laptop with almost all of the toys (LED backlit screen, RAM Drive, Hot Red Color, high end graphics, extended warranty) and still have enough money left over to buy a large screen TV for what you are going to shell out over the next two years for an iPhone.  

Regardless, with a lot of the analyst firms and publications suggesting companies block iPhone access, Apple will have to deal with this and will likely have that cooked by the generation 3 device; the 2nd generation  is expected before year end.  I think it is likely that Microsoft is actually helping, they have no real reason not to, and that would provide the quickest way for Apple to gain similar cost and price advantages to other competing products.   

Read on the next page: Should cellphones be unlocked?