The Irish are about to get Apple’s trendy phone, the iPhone, priced at €399 (£306) for the 8GB model and €499(£383) for the 16GB version. That compares to £269 and £329 in the UK. Ouch.
As if they weren’t paying enough, the tariffs for Irish iPhone users will offer a lot less than their UK counterparts for the same money.
Contracts will start at €45 (£35) for just 175 minutes talktime and 100 texts, and rise to €100 for 700 minutes of talktime and 250 texts. In the UK, the new entry-level £35 tariff gives users 600 minutes of talktime and 500 texts while the equivalent £75 tariff offers a whopping 3,000 minutes of talktime and 500 texts. For talktime and texts, it seems the Irish are getting around four times less for the same money.
There’s also a data download cap of just 1GB for Irish users, whereas UK customers have unlimited downloads. Irish users will pay 2c for every megabyte over the limit.
The iPhone goes on sale on March 14, in time for St. Patrick’s Day, and with those prices, you'd have to be pissed to buy one.-Martin Lynch
[O2 Ireland]
iphone apple mobile phone O2
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
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Comments
OUCH!!! Do they hate the Irish or something?
They don't call it Rip-Off-Republic for nothing. I should know.
Too right you'd have to be pissed to buy one! How can O2 and Apple think this sort of blatant robbery isn't going to do anything other than give them negative press, no sales, and their competitors jumping up and down for joy as they bring in even better deals to make Apple and O2 look even greedier!
Jesus, I work in Marketing but it doesn't take a 5 year old to understand the adage of business credibility and product self destruction!
I'll say it again - Apple have got too commercialised and have/are getting too big and too greedy for their own boots. Very soon they're gonna be loathed - bring back the old Apple that fought against the big boys (Microsoft) to be the peoples champion!
iirc all mobile tarrifs are absurd over there unfortunately.
It's not an Apple thing, it's a tariff thing. Remember how much these things used to cost on the mainland? It's the same as everything else - the cost will come down in time, once the infrastructure has been paid for. The Irish are just unfortunate to be playing catch-up.
As ever the Irish networks are ripping us off - what will happen when they dont sell any...will the price drop and the download cap be removed?
I bet in 2 months it will be a different story
I've heard O2 Ireland aren't supporting the visual voicemail feature either, is that right? And there's no Cloud network here like there is in the UK either, I presume...
You'd have to be mad to buy/use an iPhone in Ireland, really.
This is preposterous!
No visual voicemail!
Tariff with paddy tax!
Does anyone know how O2 is justifying this?
Btw, you can pick up an unlocked iPod in south africa for a cool $1200+. the supplier unlocks the phone for & u gotta sign a waiver on the guarantee...