Apple WWDC 2008 June 9-13, 2008, San Francisco. Will it be the same?

Easy come easy go ….

This is the hard fact Apple’s team should accept; current version of 2G iPhone had experienced a declining in sales, especially in Europe. O2 and T-Mobile must be sad, absolutely. But both can’t fight such consumers’ natural character since we all know by our self that most of us (but don’t put me in please) will better to wait the newer, better and faster version of 3G iPhone than buy the old one. Even if the price of old type had been cut extremely.

On Tuesday, April 15, O2 which is the Apple’s iPhone reseller in UK had cut the price of this hype-gadget by more than a third from £269 (US$535.991) to £169 (US$336.721). While T-Mobile, the German company did the same thing with €99 (US$157.667) offering from €399 (US$635.447) at the beginning. Thanks for XE for its live currency converter service.

However, not all iPhone’s resellers were cutting the price. Orange , a France Telecommunication company have not doing the same thing like both O2 and T-Mobile did.

CCS Insight, a mobile phone analyst based in UK, said that sales of iPhone had slowed significantly. Thanks (sorry) to big buzz surrounding the launching of 3G iPhone in June this year . Consumers are better to wait than bustling on the old one.

Is there any suggestion for Steve and Co’s here?

Kathryn Huberty, an analyst at Morgan Stanley specializing in Apple said that Apple will eventually break with its policy of favoring one network to be the exclusive distributor of the iPhone in a given territory — possibly as early as next year. Then she also added that Steve Jobs’s end game is not to limit distribution and maximize carrier payments. It’s to bring the best mobile platform to the market and then sell as many units as possible. There’s lots of ways Apple can drive revenue from the iPhone that aren’t part of the current model. Such as charging for downloads of software applications and taking a cut of internet advertising.

Hmmm, that’s not too bad. Now, this is my turn. As an Asian who live and (perhaps) will die in Asia, I would advise Mr Jobs to keep producing the 2G iPhone and sell it to my lovely continent, Asia yet with a lower price and the most important one; sell it independently!

But why? Based on the report by Instat which I had reviewed and published in March 13 - that’s a couple weeks ago - the 2G penetration will still be in a good trend. The percentage of 2G is so strong which could reach 70% , at least until 2011.

Ok, I am done! 2G is of course will not better than 3G and 4G especially in term of entertainment and functionality, but when we talk reliability and usability, then 2G iPhone’s chance to win the market share is still big enough. If you don’t believe me, just ask most mobile phone users in Asia such as India, China, Malaysia or even Indonesia right now. It’s hard for Asian not to love the things like iPhone .

Source: Times Online via Phone Review (I got it different)

Image courtesy of Gadget Scoop

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 Print Posted by Wim Permana on April 22nd, 2008