The Mac App Store may be garnering the oohs and aahs this aurora , but please , permit ’s not forget about the iPhone . AT&T certainly has n’t : the carrier announced on Thursday morning thatit will begin sell the iPhone 3GS for just $ 49 — less than one-half of its previous monetary value — on Friday , January 7 .
AT&T will continue to offer the iPhone 4 at its $ 199 and $ 299 Leontyne Price point — and Apple , for its part , isstill sell the 8 GB iPhone 3GS for $ 99 . So what give ? It ’s a little early in the year for a novel iPhone to appear , so it ’s not likely that this is about clearing armory . And the post - vacation time of year seems like a unknown time to launch such a big discount rate .
This aggressive pricing is the cheapest way to get an iPhone yet — and , to my mind , therein lie in the reply . As always , AT&T is less concerned about the number of speech sound it sells then it is about shut up exploiter into two - year contract — which , of course , the $ 49 iPhone 3GS batch command . ( It ’s also deserving pointing out that AT&T makes this softwood available to both novel client and upgrade - eligible customers . ) But why worry about that when there ’s really nowhere else for would - be iPhone owner to go ?
Well , there isn’tyet . But I recall AT&T is cutting the price on the 3GS for the same reason that I trust the carrier extended its grim upgrade pricing to more users when the iPhone 4 debut last year : to try and stem a flowage of departuresshouldApple make the iPhone available on another attack aircraft carrier .
While I ’m not going to rise up on the rooftops and proclaim at the top of my lungs that a Verizon iPhone is imminent , this move by AT&T come to me as yet another breadcrumb on the trail leading us to a future where the iPhone ’s carrier - exclusivity is a affair of the past .
