On Tuesday, retailer Wal-Mart plans to cut the price of the popular iPhone 16GB 3GS to $97. Currently this iPhone model is selling for $199. The $97 deal requires a two-year service contract with AT&T.
The dip in price could represent a hope to clear inventory and preserve sales in the lead-up to the debut of the newest iPhone next month. Good for buyers, perhaps, but a source of some aggravation for developers.
The reduction could also be a reaction to the April AdMob report that had Google’s Android phone edging out the Apple iPhone in mobile ad traffic. That report indicated that the Android had garnered more of the ad dollars spent on mobile platforms than the iPhone had, with Google at 46% to Apple’s 32%.
Apple sold around 50 million iPhones last year. Figures for the last quarter indicated a doubling in sales from the previous year.
Last month, a version of Apple’s new 4G iPhone was passed off to tech blog Gizmodo, which wrote about it. An Apple attorney, George Riley, later called this “immensely damaging” to the company.
Marco Arment, lead developer of Tumblr and Instapaper, said on Twitter tonight: “As a developer, I can’t wait until Apple stops selling the iPhone 3G and the current low-end iPod touch. Those CPUs are tough to support. And I realistically need to keep supporting them for about 2 years after Apple stops selling them.”
