Are people really paying $85/month+ for an iPhone?

[MrX8503]

I have a bridge to sell you.

Believe whatever you want, but smartphone plans were going to be costly with or without the iPhone. What about cable/internet? That stuff aint cheap either.

The reasons why we have such costly phone plans is because we live off of subsidies. There aren't very many people who'll buy a smartphone outright or stick with a carrier for two years. So the whole contract and subsidies deal was created.

Unfortunately owning your own phone doesn't give you a discount on phone plans.

 

[sgrinavi]

Is that $85 the idiot price, and it's actually much cheaper if purchased in a different way?

hmmm... well... it is the idiot price and what most of us pay.

 

[Super56K]

With TV/internet it depends on what you prioritize. If it's an HD package with premium channels then you'll pay accordingly. My Comcast bill is ~$35 a month with taxes for internet and television. (Edit - of course benefit to living in a city. My parents pay $40 a month for DSL service alone in a rural area. But my point is I could easily have a bill 3x's that if I added lots of channels/speed but I choose not to)

And regarding Verizon I really don't understand the point of this thread. If Android smart phones had plans at 25-50% off compared to an iphone...I'd own an Android phone and pocket the difference happily. But that's not the case, they're all smart phones and you pay a premium to get the data plan.

 

[Eug]

While it's cheaper, that's also a lot less minutes, data, and texts than the usual ~$80 plan. But if it matches your particular usage habits, then it makes sense.

Yeah it's fine for me. Or at least it's almost fine. I spent a little while out of town this month so there was a lot of tethering. I'm now at over 800 MB, getting awfully close to my 1 GB limit. So I called them, and they nicely offered to give me an extra 500 MB just for this month, for no extra charge. (Normally I use less than 500 MB in a month.)

As for the minutes, I usually only use up to about 300 minutes per month. However, most of those are after 5 pm, so the unlimited evening and weekends is perfect. According to my usage stats, I've only used 6 regular minutes during the last 2.5 weeks. (Calls are recorded by the second.)

As for texts, I think if I wanted unlimited texts I'd have to go on a different plan, but it'd only be about an extra $5 per month. For 6 GB data, it'd be $10 extra per month. So total, about $15 more per month.

I did sign a contract, but the reason I did was to get the iPhone paid for. I paid only about $100 for the iPhone 4. (The contract subsidizes the phone, and I had about $90 in "Fido dollars" which is sort of an incentive program for staying with them. Every month you stay with them you get some Fido cash that can be used towards buying new phones.)

 

[Dulanic]

Believe whatever you want, but smartphone plans were going to be costly with or without the iPhone. What about cable/internet? That stuff aint cheap either.

The reasons why we have such costly phone plans is because we live off of subsidies. There aren't very many people who'll buy a smartphone outright or stick with a carrier for two years. So the whole contract and subsidies deal was created.

Unfortunately owning your own phone doesn't give you a discount on phone plans.

My point is very simple....the carriers paying $200 more than a android or WM7 smartphone obviously is going to make a difference. 20 month upgrade cycle... $200... thats a $10 impact is obviously role into everyones plan pricing. Unfortunately, the carriers won't charge a "surcharge" for apple phones or raise the pricing because the apple crowd would throw a fit.

It may not be a direct impact... it can be a indirect impact and it, for the most part, has been that. Like Verizon cancelling yearly upgrades, Sprint cancelling Premier status for yearly upgrades and discounts applying to multiple lines, AT&T and Verizon cancelling unlimited.

 

[shabby]

However, I had to call and complain to get that raid. Otherwise it'd be maybe $20-25 more per month.

And that's what you have to do, complain complain and complain every time they make a small error in your bill(they do this frequently for some reason). Im down to $36/month for a 300min/6gb data/2500text/voicemail/free incoming calls plan, thank you rogers retentions!

 

[Eug]

And that's what you have to do, complain complain and complain every time they make a small error in your bill(they do this frequently for some reason). Im down to $36/month for a 300min/6gb data/2500text/voicemail/free incoming calls plan, thank you rogers retentions!

Wow, that's excellent.

A friend of mine consistently gets better rates than me, but he calls in every year and throws a hissyfit. 😛 I just politely request better deals. :\ I just can't get myself to be such an ass on the phone. 😉

 

[cheezy321]

My point is very simple....the carriers paying $200 more than a android or WM7 smartphone obviously is going to make a difference. 20 month upgrade cycle... $200... thats a $10 impact is obviously role into everyones plan pricing. Unfortunately, the carriers won't charge a "surcharge" for apple phones or raise the pricing because the apple crowd would throw a fit.

It may not be a direct impact... it can be a indirect impact and it, for the most part, has been that. Like Verizon cancelling yearly upgrades, Sprint cancelling Premier status for yearly upgrades and discounts applying to multiple lines, AT&T and Verizon cancelling unlimited.

News Flash...The iPhone is not always $200+ more unsubsidized than its android counterparts. Its actually comparable with all the top android phones out there.

Unsubsidized Prices:
iPhone 4S 16 GB = $650
Droid Razr maxx = $650
Droid Razr = $600
Galaxy Nexus = $650
HTC Rezound = $650

If you think the iPhone is the only cause of the price hikes...I have a bridge to sell you.

 

[alent1234]

My point is very simple....the carriers paying $200 more than a android or WM7 smartphone obviously is going to make a difference. 20 month upgrade cycle... $200... thats a $10 impact is obviously role into everyones plan pricing. Unfortunately, the carriers won't charge a "surcharge" for apple phones or raise the pricing because the apple crowd would throw a fit.

It may not be a direct impact... it can be a indirect impact and it, for the most part, has been that. Like Verizon cancelling yearly upgrades, Sprint cancelling Premier status for yearly upgrades and discounts applying to multiple lines, AT&T and Verizon cancelling unlimited.

the carriers aren't losing the money

apple takes care of the support and iphone has better retention. all those penny android deals are just customer acquisition costs for carriers they don't have for the they iphone

 

[MrX8503]

My point is very simple....the carriers paying $200 more than a android or WM7 smartphone obviously is going to make a difference. 20 month upgrade cycle... $200... thats a $10 impact is obviously role into everyones plan pricing. Unfortunately, the carriers won't charge a "surcharge" for apple phones or raise the pricing because the apple crowd would throw a fit.

It may not be a direct impact... it can be a indirect impact and it, for the most part, has been that. Like Verizon cancelling yearly upgrades, Sprint cancelling Premier status for yearly upgrades and discounts applying to multiple lines, AT&T and Verizon cancelling unlimited.

Dan Hesse, the CEO of Sprint, said that their iPhone customers are more profitable. All carriers take an initial hit, but they make more than enough back. No one at Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint is losing sleep over the initial expense of iPhones.

iPhones have brought in more new smartphone users than any other smartphone, this makes carriers happy.

 

[Dulanic]

News Flash...The iPhone is not always $200+ more unsubsidized than its android counterparts. Its actually comparable with all the top android phones out there.

Unsubsidized Prices:
iPhone 4S 16 GB = $650
Droid Razr maxx = $650
Droid Razr = $600
Galaxy Nexus = $650
HTC Rezound = $650

If you think the iPhone is the only cause of the price hikes...I have a bridge to sell you.

It wasn't a specifc number, nor did I say it always was. I was just using a quote off Dan Hess Sprint CEO where as a ballpark he said $200. However, take a look... all the phones mostly you are quoting are $300 subdized for android where verizon takes a bigger hit and makes the iphone $199 for the 4S 16GB.

I am not saying that Apple isn't making money for Sprint or anything of the sort... I am simply saying the carriers do subsidize more for Apple than anyone else making them less money per plan... but holy shit you goes go batshit crazy even over someone saying that....

 

[MrX8503]

Its a known fact that carriers pay more for iPhones, but that correlation with higher smartphone plan costs is still baseless.

There's nothing that shows that iPhones have been the cause of this and there's nothing that shows carriers having a problem with ordering millions upon millions of iPhones.

 

[Fingolfin269]

I think it's funny how easy it is to spark an iPhone vs. X discussion here. 🙂

 

[jpeyton]

Suckers pay $85/month post-paid with a 2-year contract.

Straight Talk BYOD = $45/month for unlimited voice/text and "unlimited" (realistically 2GB-3GB before you get capped) data

$15 for the SIM card; air time can be bought online or at WalMart B&M. If you buy online, you can setup a post-paid-style automatic monthly refill.

http://straighttalksim.com/

 

[Red Storm]

Suckers pay $85/month post-paid with a 2-year contract.

Straight Talk BYOD = $45/month for unlimited voice/text and "unlimited" (realistically 2GB before you get capped) data

$15 for the SIM card; air time can be bought online or at WalMart B&M. If you buy online, you can setup a post-paid-style automatic monthly refill.

http://straighttalksim.com/

My ~$80 a month gets me unlimited data on Verizon's LTE network though, to me that's definitely worth more than half that amount on a much more limited service.

 

[Oyeve]

I think it's funny how easy it is to spark an iPhone vs. X discussion here. 🙂

Yeah, all ya gotta do is put iphone on the subject line. 🙂

 

[Chocu1a]

I pay just under $84 after taxes on Verizon. I have 250 text, 450 anytime minutes, & unlimited data. I don't feel like I am paying too much. The speed & service is well worth it to me.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[Fire&Blood]

Lower margins or not, Carriers were going to raise prices of plans anyway. This has nothing to do with carriers eating a higher cost for iPhones. If iPhones didn't exist you'd still be paying the rate you're paying now.

Apple charges carriers 40% more than Samsung, HTC, etc and they have the whole "multi year, pay us billions of $$$" deal with the carriers.

And while Verizon does charge more than others, owning a cellphone/smartphone in the USA is too expensive in general. Straight talk plan @ $50 per month is a god example to use for comparison of subsidy vs. no subsidy plans.

Would be fun to observe if Americans suddenly decided to go retro and live like they did before 1990's while telcos are stuck with LTE investments.

 

[MrX8503]

Apple charges carriers 40% more than Samsung, HTC, etc and they have the whole "multi year, pay us billions of $$$" deal with the carriers.

Where in my posts did I deny this?

Anyway, to lower plans you'd either have to do prepaid or join in on a family plan. I'm in the latter, but may go the former in the future.

 

[RedString]

I seen my gf mom bill the other day, $133(!!!) for just her phone alone (3gb data plan, god knows why, she's a stay at home mom). This is with AT&T on a 3GS.

Gf phone typically runs about 40, they're on a family plan. This month she went over due to data being pulled from who knows where while her iPhone slept and wireless is off - factory reset and its still uploading and pulling quite a bit so we turned of cellular data.

Thank god i don't have a cell. If i did it damn sure wouldn't be at&t or an iphone.

 

[Ns1]

1. VZW is stupid crazy expensive anyway you cut it.
2. 130 after taxes for 2 iPhones with unlimited data/txt/550 shared minutes

 

[Wonderful Pork]

Because they have something that you want. Not NEED mind you, just want. There are a lot of older smartphones you can get for free, so it's entirely reasonable to pay for something brand new and cutting edge. I can't believe how self entitled people are getting. They don't owe you anything.

Me, entitled? Please. If anything the Carriers are getting entitled. Who says they need to make a profit year over year? Adapt or die! (or get bailed out!)

The carriers would love nothing more than for me to direct deposit my entire paycheck to them every 2 weeks and not use any of their services. I would love to have unlimited everything for free for everything. Neither is going to happen, so there has to be some middle ground (supply and demand) where both parties accept the deal (albeit begrudgingly). Unfortunately, the supply is constrained (3-4 carriers) and the demand is high, so prices are high too.

I know its a want not a need, but I've already said: (emphasis mine, on the 2nd go round)

And for the record, I completely understand and appreciate that businesses exist to make as much profit as possible. That's why I treat myself as a business. So why would Wonderful Pork, inc take a hit just to make AT&T richer? Framing expenses like that has saved me a ton of money, and also allowed me to spend extra on "perks" others would deem unnecessary.

What irks me is the fact that the number of options is reducing (like only offering unlimited text packages) and mandatory data plans. Not to mention the fact that the service pricing does not drop after device subsidy is recouped AND GSM devices aren't unlocked after the contract is fulfilled.(though this may be iPhone specific). It seems an awful lot like the carriers want to have their cake and eat it too.

But I digress. As I said above, there has to be some price point for both parties to accept the deal, and I'm still with AT&T because I'm on a family plan, have a large discount from work, and a corporate reimbursement from my brothers workplace. That brings the total cost of 3 lines, 2 with unlimited data and unlimited text to $80/month after tax, $40 of which is my share. I'll take that.

Its the same reason I'm with Comcast/XFINITY. Its either them or nobody, so I call them up every couple of months and they find a "promotion" to keep my bill at what I consider a reasonable level and everybody is relatively happy.

 

[QuantumPion]

The only part of my $90/month cell bill that is a ripoff is the $20/month for unlimited texting. That shit should be free and is a gazillion percent profit margin for them. I'm paying $35/month for voice and $35/month for data. But then there is the ~$30/month subsidy for a new $700 phone every 2 years. So really that $90/month is more like ~$60 a month. Sounds like a good deal to me for unlimited 4G internet capability.

 

[Red Storm]

The only part of my $90/month cell bill that is a ripoff is the $20/month for unlimited texting. That shit should be free and is a gazillion percent profit margin for them. I'm paying $35/month for voice and $35/month for data. But then there is the ~$30/month subsidy for a new $700 phone every 2 years. So really that $90/month is more like ~$60 a month. Sounds like a good deal to me for unlimited 4G internet capability.

I have the $5 for 250 texts and find that to be plenty. Any friend that is still on stone age sms I tell them to get with the times (right now it's 1-2 people, all the rest use GTalk).

 

[Kelvrick]

My wife and I are on Tmobile and pay ~$100 a month. Share 600 minutes, unlimited texting and data (in reality 5gb?)

I think I use a good 2gb a month just listening to pandora all day at work. Usually get a new phone every 1.5 years.