I'd quite like to know how these figures compare to other brand names, such as Blackberry and Nokia handsets?

It's hard to judge if they are high, low or whatever without any other numbers.

$666 ... The price of the beast ....

to other "smartphone" platforms in terms of price? What does it cost to put out a G1 or a Storm or whatever Windows Mobile POS they've got out now?

(Evil Jobs for obvious reasons.)

It's now the "Devil Phone" rather than the "Jesus Phone"?

wasn't the apple 1's wholesale price tag also $666?

Of course, anyone more than 4 minutes old will remember that the Apple 1 was flogged by Jobs and Wozniak for $666.66, back in 1976. Coincidence?

For everyone else that is.

If they made it PAYG (only able to buy "credits" from iTunes, naturally), and less than £200, other operators may as well pick up their ball and go home.

In terms of handsets sold, Apples iPhone represents a tiny fraction of the total mobile phone market (but a larger portion of the smartphones) - however in terms of profit to Apple, it is far, far higher than other manufacturers devices.

A site I have used in the past for reasonable data is Mobile Today (www.mobiletoday.co.uk). They have delayed stats for contract / prepay handset numbers. The latest are at: http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/tracker.aspx?id=42520 Perhaps that will be of interest. Of course, take any stats or figures with a pince of salt :)

The funny thing is that the origional Apple computer made from Circutry and wood (yes wood casing) was $666.66 with 4kb of ram with an extra $299 for some more ram

ahh the days that i know too much

...including vCard support, multiple recipients, picture messaging ... etc. etc.

Yeah, Google Earth is very cute, as is the website zooming, but please, get the basics right! I think they should get the iPhone to walk before they try running with it ...

You watch - Obama IS the Anti-Christ too (along with Jobs, who is of Arab decent and adopted). Israel will be attacked within the first 6 months and closet Muslim Obama will do nothing.

Of course the bastards at The Reg will censor this too.

so... the numbers we are quoting here are NOT in accordance with "Generally Accepted Accounting Practiaces?" (GAAP) . In the sake of full dislosure, through what practices ARE these numbers arrived at?

Mines the one with "Accounting 101" in the pocket

I think your trolling is going a little too far over the top to be effective even in these comment pages.

The magical polo-neck has a sense of humour and history, very good. Still doesn't make me want one though.

Erm, it does have support for multiple recipients. I can do picture messaging with my jailbroken iPhone and SwirlyMMS, but I'll admit it's less than ideal. Thankfully, I don't know a single person that uses MMS.

I'll admit that the iPhone has faults but certainly no more than any other smartphone I've used before. And if the price comes down sharply then it's going to become a pretty compelling product whether you like it or not...

Yup, mine does Multiple Recipient SMS out the box and I too use SwirlyMMS on my jailbroken one... Apple probably see the whole, free data and WiFi think as enough of an incentive for sending an email that's free, though i do agree in many ways it's handy to be able to send and receive them, but i email a lot more now from the phone as it's so easy!

Agree with Alastair too, it has some faults, but on the whole it's so much more satisfying to use than any other smartphone I have ever used or owned... just wish the 3G would get fully hacked so I can have fun with GPS :)

... just to get good SMS. It should be fully featured out of the box as its a basic must have of mobile phones. If someone sends me a business card via bluetooth or SMS on my N95 it pops up in my messages and i can add to my addresses. If i get a picture via SMS in an MMS message i should be able to add it to my photo gallery. If i get a meeting invite via SMS i should be able to add it to my calendar .... all these things i can do on a phone several years older .... and you just cannot assume people want to interact with you over email for these things. Not everyone is restricted by the iPhone!

The iphone is not a smartphone. On a smartphone, you are able to download and install your own apps. Going through a store doesn't count -- by that definition, every single phone Verizon sells is a smartphone, since apps can be got via the "GetItNow" app store.. clearly some random camera phone isn't a smartphone though. Jailbreaking? It's probably a smartphone then, but this voids the warranty and Apple tries to break it with every single update, so I'm not sure that it counts in terms of saying it's "taking over the smartphone market". It could BECOME a smartphone if Apple released a patch allowing people to put their own apps on, but they will not, Jobs is too much of a control junky.

Paris, because people claiming the iphone is a smartphone gives me a headache too. I couldn't find a steve jobs with horns.