Since when?

Since His Highness, The Lord Of All, The Saviour Of Personal Computing, Ruling By The Grace Of Woz, His Royal Highness Steve Jobs Says so. If Steve Jobs says something then it _must_ be The Truth.

If it wasn't doing so well they wouldn't be offering to buy out contracts, and sticking some very nice extras into the deals to make them all that much sweeter. We all like paying £1000 for a phone don't we?

Regardless of your narrow minded opinions of people, 4m units sold in one year when it was only released outside of the US in Q4 isn't bad, in fact i'd go so far as to say that is "selling well"

£1000 for an iphone? someone saw you coming or else the brain hasnt engaged yet today. you can get one downtown for £270

and before you start mumbling about "total price" , only do that if you are going to quote every other phone in terms of "total price"

Nokia n95 can cost from £249 - 399, an 8880 for over £400 and nobody batted an eyelid at that before.

Now you can get a phone AND ipod together for less and its a "rip off". Grow up, bunch of whiny bastards.

...compare that to the iPhone which I worked out at £900 for 18 months. That's nearly 3x the price, for less functionality (can't record video, send MMS, develop native apps (yet), isn't 3G/HSDPA, no physical keyboard...)

The £550 I saved could buy me an iPod and an XBox/PS3 (or maybe even a few Eee's)

"Now you can get a phone AND ipod together for less and its a "rip off". Grow up, bunch of whiny bastards."

Lovely.

personally, I only started adding up the cost of a phone when the iphone came out and I only started doing that because they took the unique choice of charging for the cost of the handset as well as for the contract. £1000 is a fair conclusion of cost.

It would be interesting to see how this SDK idea develops, opening the device up to be just as programmable as my PC would probably help increase their market. Previously mobile device tend to rely on java to fix this problem but its not the best solution in the world and does have some drawbacks.

i'm not saying there arent cheaper options out there, sure there are.

My point is that i NEVER heard anyone comparing prices by looking at total contract cost before and NEVER heard so much whining about prices when other phones have sometimes cost up to and over £700, but now, its all about the £1000 the iphone costs over 18 months. Wrong! The phone PLUS calls plus texts plus free wi-fi costs £1000.

And granted there are better features on others, but this Apples FIRST phone ever. Lets compare later this year.

Dont forget that £550 is saved over 18 months.. yeah maybe you could lease that ipod and xbox for £30 a month ;-)

Apple have one model of phone, and during the first quarter of sales they are 2nd to RIM (who have various models) and way ahead of nokia (who have loads too).

if that isn't selling well, then no one is

'4m units sold in one year when it was only released outside of the US in Q4 isn't bad'

Yes, but most of those sold to the Americans who always fall over themselves for the latest shiny toy and always fall for the hype. When you consider the potential market in the US alone (190million Americans have a mobile subscription) then add the rest of the world on top of that, 4 million is pitifully small. Plus when you look at the phones the US carriers had been selling, it probably is an improvement. The US are only just getting rid of external aerials while we in Europe have had a number of years to expect our phone to do far more than the iphone is capable of.

Just ask O2 and Carphone warehouse how many they are stuck with and desperately trying to be rid of.

and ask instead why el reg isn't keeping a conistent Line. Is it selling well or not? Make up your minds!!

Hey, whether they get to iPhone or not, REALbasic has been a pleasure to work with for more than 7 years for me. It touches about 60% of my income. If they do get to the iPhone/iPod Touch, watch for that platform to quickly eclipse Palm. Knowing REAL, they will make development for these embedded devices not only simple, but a real pleasure to do.

It all depends what you want out of it.

For me (and probably most iPhone users) it's not the voice minutes we want, it's the unlimited data and wi-fi roaming that's worth every penny. This phone is a laptop in your pocket, and I can do pretty much everything I can do on my macbook on it - like ordering food from Tesco online, or booking cinema tickets etc..

If you consider I never ever use 200 minutes a month, my TCO for the iPhone is (£269+£35 pcm) = £899 for 18 months.

Compare this to an N95 8Gb which is the nearest phone people compare to it.

Current offer is £143.95 for the phone, £40 per month on an 18 month contract, plus only inclusive data of 512k, so anything above that will be chargeable, so for me would probably be 2 or 3Mb per month minimum will work out approx £10 per month extra. Since November when I got my iphone I've used 42Mb on EDGE/GPRS so realistically that would have cost me £126 so far for data charges. (it's circa £3 per Mb)

So total cost of ownership with 3Mb data usage is £143.95 + (18x(£40+£10)) = £1043.95, and that's just for starters.

(Tarriff is O2-400 connection for N95 8Gb)

If you get the phone for free, (and, say, a free xbox) you'll still end up paying £1000-£1200 over 18 months at a minimum, and probably more as the networks give you nothing for free....

All premium phones cost approx the same to run on monthly tarriffs - they just cut the cake differently dependent on tarriff.

I work indirectly for an iPhone supplier, we get a discount of sorts as well, yet I still don't have one. Partially due to cost, and partially due to the fact it offers me nothing I (and many other people) want. Convergent devices are all well and good, but only when they offer the features for a good price. I can ring up T-Mobile today and get either a blackberry or windows smartphone for free. Having had a blackberry in the past I don't want one, having a windows mobile phone at the moment I don't want one of those either. Those i) don't cost for the handset, ii) don't cost me £35 a month iii) don't need sending back to Apple for a new battery if it needs replacing iv) don't look like someone dipped it in chipfat after you have made phonecall. I don't own any apple products anymore since my G3 died a horrible smokey death, and don't intend to buy any soon.

I've also got an O2 contract at the moment, and they have collared me twice trying to shift an iPhone onto me. They have offered to cancel my existing contract, and throw a few extras in to sweeten the deal. That is _not_ the sign of a product that is doing as well as they expect.

My present contracts cost me £50 a month in total, and that gives me an Old HTC Wizard from T-Mobile(mine) and an LG Viewty on O2(girlfriend). The Viewty is in my opinion a much better phone than the iPhone, it's just not as pretty, and doesn't require iTunes. Oh, and 3G is rather nice.

Lets use the Viewty as 2 phones isn't a fair example, plus the Wizard is on an old contract:

Handset Cost : £0

Tarrif : £25

£25x18 = £450

So if the girlfriend stick with the Viewty we'll have £550 more to spend on things that are more useful than a fashion phone with a couple of nifty features. Oh, and i did give her the option to swap handset to an iPhone, she pulled her face and hugged her "cheap" LG.

tell you what... use an iphone for a month, then come back and give an informative decision. When the iphone launched, i said i wouldnt get one, reminded of that everyday by my friends.

However, used one and quickly switched.

To anyone who says you can get handsets for free etc,, yes you can buy wine for £2 a bottle but how come you buy the £7 bottle? Quality and doesnt blow your head apart.

I now can finally leave my laptop behind and use just the iphone. Could never do that with any other phone no mater how much i tried and i own an ISP.

Anyway , stick your cheap handsets...

Biased views always win ;-)

"tell you what... use an iphone for a month, then come back and give an informative decision. When the iphone launched, i said i wouldnt get one, reminded of that everyday by my friends"

I don't have one, I had if for about 2 weeks, wasn't that impressed.

"To anyone who says you can get handsets for free etc,, yes you can buy wine for £2 a bottle but how come you buy the £7 bottle? Quality and doesnt blow your head apart."

Quality doesn't always depend on price, anyone that thinks that obviously isn't thinking for themselves.

"I now can finally leave my laptop behind and use just the iphone. Could never do that with any other phone no mater how much i tried and i own an ISP."

Unless of course you need an exchange server for work, and the sysadmin refuses to enable the POP3. In which case you are still going to use the laptop, because you have no other choice. At least you get a physical Keyboard and you can add a 3G modem to a lappy as well.

"Anyway , stick your cheap handsets..."

Cheap? OK, i'll tell my GF that she's wrong sticking to her 3g phone, with a 5Mpx camera and it's attendant applications, and i'll feel sorry for myself being "stuck" with my own Windows Mobile device (That is admittedly at times infuriating, but at least i can add any apps i want without voiding the warranty).

"Biased views always win ;-)"

There is little that is more Bias than a fanboy, and one of us is making out that a single product is the best thing ever, that makes which of us Bias?

I do not understand this article - there are many developers who want to support the iPhone through the SDK. That is all which is reported here - that they want to support it. REALbasic is a good product, but i use Revolution instead because it supports more operating systems than REALbasic and it uses a really easy paradigm. I have asked developers of Revolution and they would also "like" to support the iPhone.

You can read more about Revolution here: http://www.mirye.com/index.php/Runtime-Revolution/RUntime-Revolution-Studio.html

The iPhone may not be the best PDA, it may not send MMS's or be able to take video. The keyboard is, at best, awkward and It's expensive, £1000 is a lot of money in anyones wallet.

But, here's the clincher, its very very cool. and its going to get cooler with the SDK released!

I drive a diesel estate, its sensible, comfortable, economical and cheap. But its not cool. Just like my phone (A samsung somthing) which takes pictures, recieves email and makes voice calls etc.

A friend has an iphone and i love it, its tactile, looks good, works flawlessly (so far as i can see) and has all the features I use.

(as I never send MMS's, take video or need a 5mp camera). When my current contract is up I will be getting myself a lil' bit of coolness in my life and buying an iPhone.

After all its cheaper than a ferrari!