iLounge

By Charles Starrett

Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Wednesday, July 30, 2008
News Category: Mix

Reporting its second quarter financial results, Rogers revealed (PDF Link) that its contract with Apple to sell the iPhone requires the carrier to purchase a minimum of $150 million worth of the handsets. While Rogers notes that its cost of acquisition per subscriber will likely increase due to sales of the heavily-subsidized iPhone 3G, it expects that average monthly revenue per user will increase over the course of the contracts thanks to iPhone subscribers signing up for both voice and data plans.

Cambridge SoundWorks has announced its Direct to You program, in which the company will once again offer factory direct sales to its customers. The change has resulted in substantial price drops on several of its iPod-compatible sound systems, including the SoundWorks i765 iPod/Video Entertainment System, which was priced at $500 but now sells for $300, the SoundWorks Radio CD 745i with bundled iPod Dock, which dropped $100 from $350 to $250, and the SoundWorks Radio 735i, which now sells for $200 after a $50 price drop.

AT&T has posted details of its Text Accessibility Plan (TAP) for iPhone and iPhone 3G. Designed for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, have a speech disability and/or hearing loss, the TAP plan for original iPhone is $40 a month and includes unlimited SMS messaging, unlimited data, Visual Voicemail, and a $0.40 per minute voice rate. The TAP plan for iPhone 3G runs $50 a month, and includes the same features as the plan for original iPhones. Finally, AT&T will also offer a business version of the TAP plan for $65 per month that includes all the features of the standard TAP plans plus unlimited enterprise email.