to the $50-$60 range (including taxes) and suddenly everyone who already has a cellular phone can afford an iPhone.

and if that happens, buh bye Palm, sayonara Sony Ericsson, h*** no Moto. RIM and Apple will virtually own the smartphone market where the action really is.

@climacs is right. I think it's the monthly charges more than the up-front cost that prohibits most people from getting an iPhone (or getting a few for the family). Not too hard to do the math and realize how crazy expensive a data-enabled phone is over the course of a year (it's not just the iPhone).

Yeah, but you can hear the complaining already. Since the iPhone is one of the few phones that makes use of the data plan (even when you don't realize it, such as for VV), people will break through on their cap for the month and be charged the per kb fee, and costs rack up, and everyone is claiming ATT is gouging their customers.

Jesus Christ! I just want an iTouch that can make a simple friggin' phone call!

That's just dumb. My wife and I combined use only about 200-300MB/month.

Any monthly cap ought to be multi GB/month.

Honestly, if they don't drop the monthly rate I'm probably going for the early termination exit.

$60/month for 200-300MB...it's not worth it.

If they introduced the new phones with a plan similar to Tracfone's Straight Talk plan (straighttalk.com), I'd pick them up in a second. $30/month = 1000 mins 1000 text 30 MB data.

So you're saying you never break 300MB a month, but a cap should be multi-GB. Why? Wouldn't you prefer a smaller cap plan, then, so that you could pay less, esp. since you apparently are paying $60 a month on a data plan alone.

I almost bought a refurb iPhone since I am already an ATT customer, but the added cost of the plan was unacceptable to me. I don't care if the phone is free, the data plan is ridiculous. I have the max amount of rollover minutes with several hundred expiring every month. In essence I pay them to have a phone number and they want another 40 bucks a month for a data plan?

Umm. no.

It's pricy... but come on. Have you ever used one? Worth every penny.

I don't have any information, but from past experience with Apple, if its $99 or $149, then its $149. They always seem to error on the side of charging more.

$149 vs $199 for the Palm Pre, with the Palm Pre being the newer phone, with quite a bit of buzz going on, and at least some Palm users wanting to upgrade (don't laugh).

And lets not forget that the Palm data plan is cheaper....this is a great competitive move by apple, but I don't think Palms gameplan exactly required every other competitor to stand still...at least not this time :O