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

[quikah]

This is why I put up with the crappy phone and data speed on Virgin for $25.

 

[Lyfer]

Love my family plan. I pay $45 a month on my brothers plan for unlimited text and data on VZW (iPhone 4s 32gb). Don't even use voice, who even make calls now a days?

 

[Doppel]

I looked at at&t and sprint and their base plans are all the same price as verizon with a minimum text and data plan, about $80/month plus taxes. I assume these make up a meaningful portion of many people's budgets, since I see so many people with them and certainly not all make good money.

 

[OS]

thats why i quit vzw, and their contracts/plans have become even more onerous since even just two years ago. Renewal device prices are higher than new customers, they only have two year contracts now and new plans are tiered. Those are all defacto increases in prices.


anyways, i quit all that. Tmo has a $30 prepaid plan, 100M, UL txt/data. Awesome deal. They don't carry the iphone and i'm sure thats just a coincidence...

 

[Fire&Blood]

I looked at at&t and sprint and their base plans are all the same price as verizon with a minimum text and data plan, about $80/month plus taxes. I assume these make up a meaningful portion of many people's budgets, since I see so many people with them and certainly not all make good money.

Yes, few bucks, minutes, messages and/or megabytes here and there but the plans are very similar across all US telcos.

Competing is watered down so the agenda is to charge as much as the consumer will tolerate.

 

[hans007]

Verizon is absolutely worth it for the service. I live in la where t mobile is generally considered good. But its still much worse

 

[Lyfer]

Verizon is absolutely worth it for the service. I live in la where t mobile is generally considered good. But its still much worse

Agreed. I travel frequently and AT&T's coverage is minimal to no coverage where I go. Tmobile or sprint is non existent.

 

[Dominato3r]

Unlimited text/data/calling + call features is $25/month for the first year, and $45/month after that. Pretty good deal, and network is reliable.

 

[dagamer34]

I end up paying $75 for 450 minutes (which I never use), 200 texts (which I rarely use after iMessage), and 2GB of data (which I only use some) on AT&T. It sucks, I know I'm getting shafted, but I feel the other thing I am paying for is network availability, which is why I'll be switching to Verizon in the future.

 

[hans007]

Agreed. I travel frequently and AT&T's coverage is minimal to no coverage where I go. Tmobile or sprint is non existent.

One example. I went to " beyond wonderland " which is a rave like electronic dance thing in San bernardino. Friend with t mobile could barely send text. Had 30 min delays on nexus s. Friend with iPhone 4 att could get edge and 2 bars. I'm on Verizon with full 3g uploading a picture of armin van buuren. I used to use tmo but a cheap phone plan is really over priced when it doesn't work at all.


Other great things about Verizon coverage. 3g in subway in SF. Underground. 3g in the underground parking at staples center la. 3g basically the entire 5 freeway up and down the state. T-Mobile doesn't have 3g or edge and falls back to gprs on huge swathes of that route

I do admit I get a 22% corp discount on Verizon which makes the price easier to take. So I pay $78 or so for unlimited text 450 min and grandfathered data (which I probably use 1-2 gb of at best a month)

 

[zerocool84]

Love my family plan. I pay $45 a month on my brothers plan for unlimited text and data on VZW (iPhone 4s 32gb). Don't even use voice, who even make calls now a days?

Tons of people. I'm on the phone at least 2hrs a day talking to people. I wouldn't text my boss or text co-workers an important question.

 

[sm625]

Hell yeah people pay it. Not only that, but they'll drop an extra $20 a month in apps on top of it. They love it. Cant get enough. Apple needs to buy verizon so they can jack the cost up to $170 a month and lock out AT&T and others. Appleheads will still pay.

What's really funny is when you see somebody talking or txting on one of these phones while swiping their bridge card with the other. I'm like... well if you didnt make such stupid financial decisions you wouldnt need to steal my tax money to pay for your frickin oreo cookies.

Millions of people spend over $1500 a year on these stupid scam abominations. You could get the same thing for $20 every 90 days and $40 a month for a wifi connection and have internet at home too. It is only the rare individual that actually requires the 3G capability.

The real irony is a lot of these same people also drop $120-$180 a month on their cable bill. Now we're talking as much as $17000 every 5 years on basically nothing.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

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.

Where did you get this 40% more figure? So iPhone 4S vs SGS2, they were charging 40% more for the iPhones?

Let's say AT&T pays $500 for an iPhone, so you're saying they were only charging $350 for the SGS2? Obviously now the SGS2 is much cheaper, but lets use the 2 months after the SGS2 launch for comparison.

But the bottom line is iPhone or Android, this mentality that we deserve $100 or $200 smartphones is ridiculous. People jump carrier to carrier because in the US we have stupid exclusivity issues.

In other countries, people see "Oh the new iPhone is out" or "New HTC One X." They might sign a new contract to renew or just buy a new phone outright and jam their SIM in. Here in the US you have to be aware of which carrier carries this phone. There's more than a handful of people on this board who went from G1 to iPhone to Droid to EVO to GNex. Notice that this requires jumping carriers. That's the solution now. A new phone is tied with a new carrier essentially, and with people jumping around senselessly, it's always about subsidies.

It's like tying your laptop to your ISP. Oh wow if I had to shop laptops based on whether I want Comcast or Time Warner or AT&T or Verizon FIOS, then I would throw a major fit. It's time to move off these idiotic subsidies.

I pointed out a few years ago that with the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4, people were allowed to upgrade within 1 year which meant that Apple clearly paid in heavily to allow early upgrades. If you include the original iPhone and if they calculate for the costs to break even in 2 years for each phone, that's 8 years worth of phones in a 3 year period. I can bet you AT&T paid HEAVILY for that. Even if they didn't end up LOSING money, think of the extra money they would've had to improve networks.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I looked at at&t and sprint and their base plans are all the same price as verizon with a minimum text and data plan, about $80/month plus taxes. I assume these make up a meaningful portion of many people's budgets, since I see so many people with them and certainly not all make good money.

Stop trolling.

First, it's not just iPhones but Smartphones that require a dataplan.

Before, the need for smartphones, people were still paying $40+/month for cell phone service.

And if you didn't want a cell phone, you needed a land line which isn't free.

So yes, people pay $80+/month for phone/data service.

 

[notposting]

Shoot, I pay $90/month for a family plan with my smartphone including unlimited data and a dumbphone.

$41 + 9.99 America's Choice II plan, 500 Anytime Minutes, free VZW-VZW calls, free N&W calls.
$24.60 Unlimited Data
$5 250 texts

With taxes and fee's around $90, that is including 18% corporate discount on my line and my data. Of course, my calling plan, data plan, and messaging plan are all grandfathered in and I can no longer use my upgrade without losing my texting plan except in store or possibly over the phone. Not even VZW's website will allow it. So if they ever get around to adding a decent WP I will be shopping with them to burn my last NE2.

 

[hans007]

Where did you get this 40% more figure? So iPhone 4S vs SGS2, they were charging 40% more for the iPhones?

Let's say AT&T pays $500 for an iPhone, so you're saying they were only charging $350 for the SGS2? Obviously now the SGS2 is much cheaper, but lets use the 2 months after the SGS2 launch for comparison.

But the bottom line is iPhone or Android, this mentality that we deserve $100 or $200 smartphones is ridiculous. People jump carrier to carrier because in the US we have stupid exclusivity issues.

In other countries, people see "Oh the new iPhone is out" or "New HTC One X." They might sign a new contract to renew or just buy a new phone outright and jam their SIM in. Here in the US you have to be aware of which carrier carries this phone. There's more than a handful of people on this board who went from G1 to iPhone to Droid to EVO to GNex. Notice that this requires jumping carriers. That's the solution now. A new phone is tied with a new carrier essentially, and with people jumping around senselessly, it's always about subsidies.

It's like tying your laptop to your ISP. Oh wow if I had to shop laptops based on whether I want Comcast or Time Warner or AT&T or Verizon FIOS, then I would throw a major fit. It's time to move off these idiotic subsidies.

I pointed out a few years ago that with the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4, people were allowed to upgrade within 1 year which meant that Apple clearly paid in heavily to allow early upgrades. If you include the original iPhone and if they calculate for the costs to break even in 2 years for each phone, that's 8 years worth of phones in a 3 year period. I can bet you AT&T paid HEAVILY for that. Even if they didn't end up LOSING money, think of the extra money they would've had to improve networks.

well part of that is due to carrier tech.

europe DOES get to swap sims to whatever since its all GSM. but eventually it wont be. if anything that is one place the US is ahead of europe.

i mean you want a phone that runs LTE band X and voice tech GSM or voice tech CDMA and you are going to need seperate phones, or multiband radios.

i dont really think its that bad that i can't switch carriers at will. i would just love it if it was all contract free. you can sell your old phone anyway. its the contracts that keep everyone tied in. i am not even completely against contracts. but i wish they still had 1 year contracts (and verizon did until may or so)

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

well part of that is due to carrier tech.

europe DOES get to swap sims to whatever since its all GSM. but eventually it wont be. if anything that is one place the US is ahead of europe.

Uh, how is the US ahead of Europe in that sense? The ability to swap SIM cards and put it in any phone I want without having to go through the carrier is very useful.

Can you imagine having to call Comcast everytime you're buying a new router or a new PC that you want to hook up? You pay for the subscription, and that's it. Who gives a shit what phone/PC/router I hook up. Same with a mobile phone subscription.

i mean you want a phone that runs LTE band X and voice tech GSM or voice tech CDMA and you are going to need seperate phones, or multiband radios.

The reason we didn't go CDMA all across the US was because obviously there was some dick sucking and favors going around with Qualcomm being a US company and being able to deploy across the US. It's because of this the iPhone took forever to land on Verizon and why our phones are fragmented.

i dont really think its that bad that i can't switch carriers at will. i would just love it if it was all contract free. you can sell your old phone anyway. its the contracts that keep everyone tied in. i am not even completely against contracts. but i wish they still had 1 year contracts (and verizon did until may or so)

Switching carriers isn't an issue, but you should be switching because Verizon offers better coverage or it offers better rates or whatever, not because you can't get the GNex on AT&T when clearly it runs a pentaband radio. You get the SGS2 across the carriers in the UK, and you worry about the service separately. Everyone was excited to get the SGS2 on AT&T and kept whining why it didn't show up for Verizon and we ended up having to wait for the GNex, which is now this exclusive phone. Yeah I could import it for AT&T but whats up with HAVING to do that anyway?

If we had some concept of worldwide standards, it would make deploying phones a lot easier worldwide. US carriers shouldn't have to get special versions of phones to work on all 4 carriers. Worse is we should slap the 4 carriers into shape and disallow them to make 4 fucking Galaxy S phones with slight physical modifications.

The bottom line is US carriers spend way too much money on exclusive carrier branded phones and have huge ad campaigns based around exclusive phones. I'm pretty sure all that money could go into better service.

I always draw a parallel to the computer industry. Can you imagine region specific Intel CPUs, motherboards? Can you imagine tying your equipment to your internet service provider? That's outrageous.

I understand the whole drive to get people on cell phones 10 years ago when there were lucrative subsidies and maybe the same when the smartphone revolution started, but after a while, we need to separate equipment from service. It's going to be tough with the mindset we have in the US, and it's not changing anytime soon.

 

[Bman123]

I know carriers are expensive. That's why I use pre paid thru t mobile. $30 a month for 5gb of 4g data, unlimited text and 100 minutes. Bought the groove IP app and use Google voice to make my calls for free.

 

[hans007]

I meant we are ahead of Europe for 4g so they will eventually splinter and be unable to swap Sims too

 

[O9O9O9]

I still have the iPhone 4 and Verizon's grandfathered unlimited plan. Never letting go of this if I can help it

 

[Blueychan]

Apple hate is ridiculous on anandtech forums.

 

[Red Storm]

I still have the iPhone 4 and Verizon's grandfathered unlimited plan. Never letting go of this if I can help it

Same, my unlimited plan is the only thing keeping me tied to Verizon. When they put the final nail in its coffin, I will morn the loss of my super fast, great coverage network, but I will also rejoice at being free at last!

My phone & tablet have almost entirely negated my need for a dedicated PC. It's too bad I love playing PC games lol.

 

[jpeyton]

$45/month on Straight Talk using a GS3.

 

[Chiropteran]

I was paying $73-76/month (fees and taxes varied from month to month) on Verizon for my original droid and later a droid bionic.

Switched to T-Mobile, now i'm paying exactly $30 no fees or taxes on top, with my Galaxy Nexus.

Contract deals are universally terrible. Prepaid is the way to go.

 

[Red Storm]

I was paying $73-76/month (fees and taxes varied from month to month) on Verizon for my original droid and later a droid bionic.

Switched to T-Mobile, now i'm paying exactly $30 no fees or taxes on top, with my Galaxy Nexus.

Contract deals are universally terrible. Prepaid is the way to go.

Except that good network coverage and speed are among the most important and useful things to have, and Verizon absolutely thrashes T-Mobile in this regard.