M1 and StarHub have officially announced the launch of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S. Sales will commence on Wednesday 9 December 2009. The prices of the phones as well as the specially priced phone subscription plans have also been announced. Prices are remarkably different from those of SingTel. There is also some differentiation between M1 and StarHub.
The iPhone 3G S 32GB will cost between $0 and $658 at M1, and between $0 and $668. The contract subscription plans range from $198 to $36 for M1, and $205 to $38 for StarHub. It looks like M1 edges out slightly. At the lowest price plan, M1 offers 10GB data, while StarHub offers only 1GB data.
Notably, the lowest price plan from M1 is itself quite attractive. There is no where you could get anything like it from other telcos, or even M1 themselves without also getting an iPhone to go along. It’s almost like the iPhone purchase would be subsidizing the subscription plan.
It looks like M1 is a winner with the latest iPhone offers.
I wonder if SingTel would be making adjustments to their prices. Anyone who would want to get an iPhone with SingTel would already have done so, so there might not be much incentive for SingTel to reduce their prices, except perhaps, to curb the success of M1’s and StarHub’s iPhone sales.
For consumers, it will be nice if all telcos make adjustments to their usual subscription. All of them make special voice+data bundles for iPhone. There is no reason to exclude other smartphone users from getting onto the same voice+data bundles.
Update (8 Dec 2009): It seems that SingTel has announced that they will also be revising their iFlexi plans.
Update (8 Dec 2009): It seems StarHub wants to do better. They’ve upgraded the 1GB bundled data in their lower priced plans to 12GB of bundled data, beating M1’s 10GB data bundle. Good competition. Let’s hope it spills over to non-iPhone plans too. I’m not going to keep updating this blog post about the latest developments…
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