This has been playing on my mind for awhile. The iPhone has been released in the UK and the Mac Macs have bought it. How is Apple going to compete going forward? I have to admit, I don't know how the American phone market works, but here in the UK, it seems based on price. I have never heard anyone say, I am saving up for my new phone. The contract they have will come up for renewal, they will look at the phones that are free and pick the best free one.

In the past, I have seen phones that I like, but by the time my contract was up, they were no longer available. I picked the best free one I could get at the time of contract renewal. The Nokia N95 would seem to me, to be the best phone around. It is free on all networks. These are some of the deals I could find.

Three has it for £35/month with 300 free minutes and 150 free video minutes.

o2 has it for £30/month with 400 free minutes.

Vodafone has the latest 8gb, N95 model for free on some tariffs and £100 on a £35/month tariff with 500 free minutes.

So, how is Apple going to compete with this? They aren't going to give away free phones, this would just kill iPod sales. Can Apple prove that if you buy an iPhone they will come up with such great ideas in software updates that you can keep this phone for years? You would basically be getting a new phone and features every few months.

I have a brave idea and I wonder if Apple would consider it. They already have a business model in this space that others weren't brave enough to try. The iPod Touch is £199, the Nano is £99. What if all iPod Touches were iPhones, but the functionality was turned off? When you were ready for your new phone, you could sync it with iTunes and pay to have your iPod Touch be an iPhone.

As prices come down, the iPod Touch might come down to £150, or even less. Could it come with Nano functions and you pay to turn on the wireless functions and then the phone? Of course this would give the hackers a real target: Unlock the phone feature without paying Apple anything.

I wonder how many people have iPod Touches and now wish they had the phone, but aren't going to pay twice. With this model, Apple don't have to give away free phones, they encourage you to buy cheap iPod's and the phone is there when you want it.
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Tags: phone, mobile

Last week we had a guest speaker come to the office to talk about virtual worlds and Second Life in particular. He mentioned he had an iPhone. He was very kind, and let me add it to our Wi-Fi network and have a play. It joined easier than some of our laptops do. It worked just as well as promised. Safari was amazing. I didn't get a chance to play with it for long, but flicking through pictures with my finder was great fun.

Whatever the success of the iPhone might be, I think we will all be grateful to Apple. The iPhone will force other phone makers to think about what they are making and we will all get better phones because of it. Hopefully Apple can break the networks control over the phones, and we can have the devices that we want and the manufactures would want us to have.

Tags: iphone, phone, gadgets, mobile

Every other blog had something on the iPhone, so I thought I had better not be left out!

Tags: phone, gadgets, iphone, mobile