AT&T Considering $10 Drop in iPhone Monthly Plan Rates?
TheStreet.com reports on comments from analyst Michael Cote suggesting that AT&T is considering reducing the basic monthly iPhone plan from $69 to $59 alongside an announcement of the next-generation iPhone at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference.
AT&T is considering a $10 price cut for the iPhone's monthly service plan when Apple introduces the newest version of the phone next month.
There is a "strong possibility" that AT&T will drop the entry-level price to $59 from $69, says Cote Collaborative analyst Michael Cote, an industry pricing strategist. The announcement, he said, will probably accompany the launch of the new iPhone on June 8, during Apple's World Wide Developers Conference.
Cote reports that iPhone sales through Wal-Mart have failed to meet expectations, giving Apple concerns about pricing barriers. While Cote does not see Apple introducing a lower-cost "iPhone nano" as has been rumored for some time, his comments indicate that AT&T is also recognizing the pricing difficulties and is willing to work to make iPhone contracts more affordable, thereby stimulating demand.
Recent sales success for Research in Motion's BlackBerry models, as well as increased competition from the upcoming Palm Pre and forthcoming touchscreen handsets from Nokia, are placing pressure on Apple to continue to find ways to generate new customers.
Finally, Cote points to an approaching "fashion milepost" for the iPhone, as popular phones and other gadgets tend to lose their appeal in their third year on the market, although Apple would certainly argue that continued innovations on both the software and hardware fronts should allow the iPhone to remain at the head of the pack.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....