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Jason D. O'Grady & David Morgenstern
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iPhone 3G EOL; 3GS price cuts inevitable

By | April 19, 2010, 8:46am PDT

Summary: With the new iPhone rumored to be around two months away, rumors abound that Apple will “End of Life” the iPhone 3G and drop the prices of the 3GS.

Reader Alex Thompson was surprised that Apple didn’t announce the End-Of-Life (OEL) of the 8GB iPhone 3G at the iPhone OS 4 event. After all, Apple confirmed that the iPhone 3G won’t support multitasking in iPhone OS 4, so should they stop selling it?

The answer of course, is no. Apple wants to sell as many iPhones as possible at full retail price (plus commissions from AT&T, natch) before the new iron comes out and completely freezes the market.

The conventional wisdom is that Apple will announce a $100 cut in the iPhone 3GS pricing (drop the 16GB to $99 & the 32GB to $199) in order to prime sales until the iPhone HD phone goes on sale in June. The logic being that Apple’s component pricing should be better nine months in.

Although there is some precedent, Apple dropped the price of the iPhone 3G to $99 (with contract) when the iPhone 3GS was announced, it will probably wait drop the price of the iPhone 3GS until the iPhone HD (or whatever it’s called) is announced. I’m betting on WWDC 2010, currently rumored to run June 28 - July 2, 2010.

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Topics

Apple iPhone, Phone, Pricing Strategy, 3G, Pricing, Cellular Phones, Wireless And Mobility, Telecom & Utilities, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Marketing, Jason D. O'Grady

Jason O'Grady is a journalist and author specializing in mobile technology. He has published six books on Apple and mobile gadgets and his PowerPage blog has been publishing for over 15 years.

Disclosure

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady is the creator and editor of O'Grady's PowerPage, which has been publishing mobile technology news since 1995. He maintains an advertising relationship with the following legacy advertisers on the PowerPage:

  • Amazon Associates
  • Google Adsense
  • Tekserve

    • Advertising on the PowerPage is brokered by a third-party agency (BackBeat Media) and he recuses himself from these negotiations.

Biography

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady developed an affinity for Apple computers after using the original Lisa, and this affinity turned into a bona-fide obsession when he got the original 128 KB Macintosh in 1984.

He started writing one of the first Web sites about Apple (O'Grady's PowerPage) in 1995 and is considered to be one of the fathers of blogging. He has been a frequent speaker at the Macworld Expo conference and a member of the conference faculty. He also co-founded the first dedicated PowerBook User Group (PPUG) in the United States.

After winning a major legal battle with Apple in 2006, he set the precedent that independent journalists are entitled to the same protections under the First Amendment as members of the mainstream media.

O'Grady is the author of The Nexus One Pocket Guide, The Droid Pocket Guide, The Google Phone Pocket Guide, and The Garmin nuvi Pocket Guide (Peachpit Press), the author of Corporations That Changed the World: Apple Inc. (Greenwood Press), and a contributor to The Mac Bible (Peachpit Press). In addition, he has contributed to numerous Mac publications over the years, including MacWEEK, Macworld, and MacPower (Japan).

When he's not writing about Apple for ZDNet at The Apple Core, he enjoys spending time with his family in New Jersey.

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