December 29, 2008 by James Oliver
It’s been the worst kept secret in America for almost a month now, but finally, on Sunday, to absolutely nobody’s surprise, Walmart began selling iPhones. Americans can now walk into any of Walmart’s thousands of outlets and pick up an 8 gig iPhone 3G, priced at $197 dollars or its 16 gig counterpart for $297 dollars. Of course, both these models require signing up to the obligatory two year AT&T contract.
The biggest surprise/disappointment for the American consumer is that the rumoured $99 dollar iPhone has proved to be just that, a rumour. Over the past month, since the Walmart news was ‘leaked,’ blogs message-boards and even sections the so called legitimate press have been speculating about a mythical 4GB iPhone that would retail at a meagre $99 dollars. This sparked a frenzy of speculation and debate – is Apple downgrading to target the casual user? are they harder hit by the credit crunch than we’ve been led to believe?
This, of course, generated huge publicity for the Walmart launch without Apple having to lift a finger. In the event, the regular phones went on sale for about $2 dollars less than you’d get them elsewhere. I can’t say with any certainty whether this was all part of Apple’s plan, though the widespread nature of the $99 dollar iPhone rumours would seem to point to a pretty credible source within the company.
It doesn’t matter really, I suppose. Either way Apple come up smelling of roses… Again.
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