“Low-cost mobile operator Iliad will lease high-end smartphones to subscribers of its 19.99 euro or 15.99 euro per month Free Mobile packages as it continues to heap pressure on France’s leading telecoms operators,” Reuters reports.
“Subscribers to the Free Mobile packages can now rent high-end smartphones, such as Apple Inc’s iPhone 5s,” Reuters reports, “for 12 euros ($16.50) a month over two years, with an initial payment of 49 euros.”
“Earlier this month, Iliad added 4G high-speed broadband service to its Free Mobile offers without raising the price,” Reuters reports. “This increased competition with Orange, Vivendi’s SFR and Bouygues Telecom…”
Read more in the full article here.
That should piss off the analysts who are always yelling about how Apple’s iPhone is going to be the first to get tossed aside if subsidies go away. Apple could easily subsidize their own smartphones if they really needed to and it shouldn’t make one bit of difference. Apple just wouldn’t get all that cash up front but then again neither would any other company.
I personally don’t think smartphone subsidies will disappear completely but there certainly are concerns regarding such a thing happening. We’ll see which major carrier has the balls to go first.
With all the cash Apple has maybe it should just become its own MVNO and cut out the middleman. The analysts are constantly saying how Apple is always the most vulnerable, but I don’t see it that way at all when a company has an overabundance of cash to use.
@ Boy48. So you would like Apple inc. to become the new Middlebronfman would you?
http://english.turkcebilgi.com/Edgar+Bronfman,+Jr.