The iPhone is a device that combines the capabilities of a music player with those of a mobile phone (among other services) and whose availability is scheduled for next June in the United States, while it will still take a few more months to reach Europe.
Of the 26 percent of respondents who indicated their intention to buy the iPhone, only 1 percent stated that they would be willing to pay the $ 500 that the lower-capacity model is expected to cost.
Forty-two percent of this group indicated that they would be willing to buy the phone if its price were in the $ 200 to $ 299 segment.
Although the iPhone has been described as a competitor to BlackBerry devices, it seems that these are products that go to different markets, as Andy Neff, an analyst at Bear Stearns, points out. “Even if we talked about this product as an alternative to RIM’s, it is not a corporate product,” he says. On the contrary, the iPhone is an indication of the shift towards smartphones and the emergence of niches in this product category, he concludes.
On the other hand, there are already precedents in which Apple has announced a product at a certain price to finally sell it for a lower price. For example, the Apple TV price was expected to be $ 399, and finally its price is $ 229.
The phone’s starting price is likely to be $ 500 because technophiles are likely to pay that amount, Neff says. But surely the price will end up dropping $ 100 or $ 200 to penetrate the mass market, he continues.
