All Articles Tagged prices

We have to wonder if Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has some insidious plot to make his PR people pull their hair out, so they’ll look just as Fester’ian as he himself. Or maybe he’s just jealous of the love TiPb’s been giving Palm’s Roger McNamee lately? How else can you account for the glorious (for bloggers!) content he keeps spewing in our general direction?

What now? From the man who once said the iPhone would be the most expensive phone on the planet (guess he didn’t see the Windows Mobile Xperia X1a going for $800…), now comes the following, courtesy of WMExperts:

“Windows Mobile 6.5 has touch on it. The way Apple does touch drives cost. [The] way they do it on the iPhone is not an inexpensive component. We’ll do it in a way that you can afford to do it on most phones.”

Bu-bu-bu-but…! We thought WinPho was all about choice? Shouldn’t manufacturers like HTC, who’ve made capacitive touch screen devices like the Android G1 (which is hardly that expensive!) have the choice to offer WinPho devices with capacitive touch?

So not only does Ballmer try to spin Microsoft’s abject failure to deliver on capacitive touch 2 years after Apple (and months after Android and even BlackBerry) as a cost saving feature, but for extra bonus bluster, claims Apple is “driving cost” on the $199 iPhone?

Next time, stick to dancing…

Thanks to reader, Adam R. who wrote in to let us know Australian rates have been revealed, and his Blackberry can now “go the way of the dodo”.

First up is Optus who’ve announced both pre-paid and post-paid plans. Pre-paid Turbo Caps start at AUS$30 for an AUS$30 “mycredit”, AUS$110 “mybonus”, and AUS$30 “mytime money” — but no “mydata”. At AUS$100 you get 100/800/100 and Plus 1GB “mydata”. On these plans, and 8GB iPhone 3G will run you AUS$729 and 16GB, AUS$849. Not confusing enough for non-Ozzies, plan rates weigh in at AUS$0.78/min. for national calls,AUS$0.35 per “Flagfall” call, and AUS$02.2/KB weekdays and AUS$1.1/KB for “iZoo Browsing”.

Read on for Post-paid, Telestra’s first statement, Canadian craziness, and some Swedish relief!

Read the rest of this entry »