In the midst of all the iPhone frenzy, I was pointed to this video footage from Campbell Live. It's an interview with Mark Rushworth, the head of marketing for Vodafone, New Zealand.
I'm normally a fan of Campbell but I think he missed the point this time around. Vodaphone isn't boning us on the iPhone, they are boning us on everything. When you compare the announced prices for the iPhone hardware and planes with all the other mobile offerings in New Zealand, it stacks up pretty favorably.
Mr. Rushworth made my skin crawl, but basically he's right, their iPhone offering is in line with the rest of their mobile line up. To compare the iPhone prices with the plans announced world wide isn't the point. The question that remains is ... what are we going to do about it? So far the answer has been "not much".
UPDATE 10:15pm: Kursten Shalfoon (Vodafone NZ GM Products and Services) has posted a breakdown of how the iPhone plans compare price wise. Across the three iPhone plans they save you around 5-20% compared to existing plans.
The other thing which I think it's important to remember, and hopefully I'm not being too snide, is that Vodafone is not a technology company, they are a marketing company with a technical product. They have been relentlessly outsourcing the technical part of their business for quite a few years. Unsurprisingly that's left them without much of competitive advantage and difficulties competing on price (outsourcing is not cheap). It's no wonder they are ecstatic about the iPhone, it finally gives them something worthwhile to sell.
Despite all of this, and my public frustrations with Vodafone I'm still gonna buy an iPhone because it's the best chance I've found for a single device which can do most of what I want (phone, GPS, iTunes, eBooks ... if only they'd come out with a SIP client).