KEY POINTS:
If Apple can make vendors around the world stick to the iPhone 3G pricing model announced by Steve Jobs for its July 11th rollout, it stands to reason that flash-based iPods (nano, shuffle, touch) are due for a big price drop.
Give or take a few dollars for importing costs, GST, exchange fluctuations and all that, the iPhone 3G should theoretically retail here for around $270 for the 8GB model and $400 for the 16GB model.
To all intents and purposes, iPhones are iPod touches with 3G phone capabilities. But currently an iPod touch offers all of the same features of the current pre-3G iPhone except for the phone part.
It has a similar touch-screen, and even WiFi, giving users email and internet access wherever there's a hot spot, and the syncing capabilities too. It sells here for $449 for the 8GB model.
Now, for your dollars, what would you rather have? And iPod touch (effectively) that can phone for $270, or would you rather spend a whole $179 more for an 8GB iPod touch that can't phone?
To me, it would appear Apple would be very sensible to reduce the price of the iPod touch. Quite dramatically. If so, this should ripple on to effect the price of the small-screen iPod nano (currently $219 for the 4GB and $299 for the 8GB) and the virtually control-free and screenless, clip-on iPod shuffle, which is currently $79 for a 1GB and $99 for a 2GB model.
Neither the nano nor the shuffle boast the big screen tech of the iPod touch, and neither has wireless capabilities.
The difference with the iPhone pricing model is that Apple can conceivably glean a percentage from every phone contract sold along with iPhones, and maybe even from prepay sales in those countries where prepay is supported (from which New Zealand is still excluded, by the looks of it).
This forms a nice little income generated from every single - unhacked - iPhone sold. This would help offset the low margins of the iPhone 3G hardware prices - as announced by Jobs, anyway - for months or years after each iPhone is sold. One estimate put the iPhone 3G build cost at US$173 per phone for a unit sold for just US$199. It's hard to imagine vendors like Vodafone even making a cent from an iPhone sale, in that case, meaning they'll be relying completely on contract revenue for an item that should sell like hot cakes.
Apple can't do that with iPods ... or can it? Factor in the price people pay for songs on iTunes, the biggest legal seller of music in the US and perhaps the world.
Hmm. Clever.
