An iPad for under 200 quid*
*You'd be throwing in your soul, of course
Orange has announced how much it is prepared to subsidise the Apple iPad, and it pushes the entry-level fondle slab down below £200 with Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity.
You'll have to agree to pay Orange £27 a month for the next couple of years, less a couple of quid if you're already indentured to Orange. So, including the £200 down payment, you'll be handing over £848 for 1GB of data a month (plus 1GB of off-peak data).
Buy the same 16GB slab direct from Apple (£529), and pay O2 or Vodafone a tenner a month for a similar quantity of data (excepting the off-peak allowance), and you'll be paying out £769 overall - but that assumes you've got £529 burning a hole in your pocket now.
The iPhone was originally sold without a network subsidy, which is why it didn't have 3G or MMS. It was only when Apple accepted the operator shilling that sales skyrocketed (and the iPhone finally got MMS) - handset subsidy is the new never-never, only without the hiding-behind-the-sofa option.
When developing the original Palm Pilot, the company worked very hard to get the price down to what they called "a single-spouse decision" - Apple couldn't get the iPad down to that level, but with the operators' help, it might yet be done... ®
COMMENTS
Subsidy? What nonsense. More like Loan sharks.
This is never a subsidy, el reg. It is purely like a hire purchase at 20 to 30% ish plus APR for a product you want to buy without upfront costs. And no escape or returns halfway thru. (Unlike other items eg cars, Tvs etc which can be returned/surrendered or claimed back by the company for the unused portion of the deal time/defaults.)
Or a loan/installments scheme.
Loan sharks, anyone?
Paris , cos I dont mind a higher APR for being loaned/subsidised to me.
"a single-spouse decision"
I like that!
It always with me though, it's also "a single-spouse consequence" too when I've pushed my luck too far!
well it didn't
The first iteration of the Iphone didn't have 3G and MMS. Held it back quite a bit except for the proper fanbois who chose to claim that email was better anyway.
Sorry, the iPad is selling with or without a subsidy
The iPad--just like the iPhone--is exploding without a subsidy and the other OEMs can barely match the unsubsidized iPad price with smaller tablets AND a subsidy.
I'm sure Apple doesn't mind the extra Orange and T-mobile lunch money, but generally Apple is completely sidelining the telcos with the iPad and they don't even seem to realize it.
1. First iPad--Zero telco option, doesn't even have a 3G chip.
2. 3g iPad--no subscription required, pay as you go, stop when you want
3. China rollout--no telco meddling this time like with the kneecapped Chinese iPhone and no waiting for 3 years after the original device was introduced.
4. Verizon selling iPads in time for Christmas WITHOUT a CDMA chip and WITHOUT a two year subscription. This was a marketing masterstroke that must have put a huge lump of coal in Samsung's Christmas stocking.Even six months ago this idea would have been silly-talk and just goes to show how ambivalent Verizon is to Android and how desperate they are to get the iPhone
Also note that Apple made Facetime completely independent of the telcos. (And yes, I know that the current iPad can't do Facetime.)
And let's not forget
that iPad 2 will be out in April.
So anyone who signs up for this "subsidy" will be buying an item for around £300 over RRP, which will be obsolete in four months.
And which will be almost useless when iPad 3 arrives - because it's a fair bet that whatever version of iOS is around then will include the usual crippleware old-hardware lockdown.
If the deal had been £20/mth for 18 months, there would have been a stampede - even at £299 rather than £199.
But this is just a ploy to round up all the stupid people and mug them for Christmas.
