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Comment by utexaspunk | Hacker News Reader

Correct, the price of the phone is about the same and I'd say my Droid Incredible is quite comparable to the iPhone in terms of quality and experience (I had a G1 before, which I loved, but could not quite say was on par with an iPhone). But there's another price- being locked in to AT&T, being locked in to phones made by Apple, being locked out of web sites that use Flash or apps that Lord Jobs has not blessed. The original point still stands, IMHO.

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Hmmm. I got my unlocked HTC Desire for £350, and googling for 'sim free iphone 3gs' shows me prices in the £600 range.

Sure, but that's not how 99% of people get their phones, especially here in the US. From the perspective of a typical US phone buyer, who purchases a phone along with a 2-year contract, the prices are about the same.

Same in the UK, but looking at the cost of iPhone contracts and HTC desire contracts, the difference in cost does seem to be borne out - iPhone contracts look to be more expensive here.

How else was Apple going to maintain their 55%+ profit margins on the things?

It sure does make you wonder why Verizon is charging as much as AT&T for their Android plans when the device is almost half the cost. I guess the answer is because they can, because they have a better network. I also wonder if Android handset vendors will try to get a cheaper plan out of Verizon when the Verizon iPhone supposedly lands this summer/fall...

> How else was Apple going to maintain their 55%+ profit margins on the things?

Gross margin on Apple products has consistently been around 33%, at least for as long as I've been listening to their quarterly conference calls.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/07/29/report-iphone-margins...

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