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October 28, 2007

iPhone Going To Be Expensive In Canada, Eh?!

Duncan Riley

37 comments »

canukistan.jpg
The long wait for the iPhone in Canada may be just about over, with the above unconfirmed ad suggesting that the phone will go on sale December 7 for $499 CAD. That’s $520 USD, $121 more expensive than the other side of the border, and worse still the phone comes with a three year Rogers Wireless plan as opposed to the two year plan for American users under AT&T.

(via Boy Genius)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. dale

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:03 pm

    What a rip off!! Typical Canadian pricing. Greedy!! Rogers. there services sucks in Canada.

  2. Faramarz

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:06 pm

    not only that, but because of our ’socialist’ government antics, a data plan would with this iphone is going to be astronomical compared to the U.S.

  3. Andrew

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:07 pm

    I am not sure this isn’t a photoshopped. Rogers (the only GSM carrier in Canada) doesn’t offer unlimited data plans, wireless data is insanely expensive up here - so they would have to include data in order to offer the iPhone (or it would be 500.00 a month), and that would seriously piss off the other carriers in their comfy little wireless oligopoly.

    If Apple can force Rogers to drop its rates, in a market where no other vendor has had the guts to stand up to them, they will have a special place in my computing heart (and wallet) forever.

  4. Markus

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:07 pm

    It’s always interesting to hear Americans complain about the state of the mobile industry there (as compared to Europe and Asia). The government protected telecom oligopoly here in Canada is beyond laughable.

    Bell, Rogers and Telus are borderline criminal operations IMHO.

    (But then again Rogers stock has nearly doubled in the past year!)

  5. Thinker

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:09 pm

    Is it the falling dollar??

  6. Jarett

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:14 pm

    Are you sure about that exchange rate? The Canadian dollar just recently became worth more than the US dollar by a few cents. So, $500 Canadian would actually be just about $500 US.

  7. Jono

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    I don’t think this is real. Why is the word Apple followed by (C)? You can’t copyright a word. Perhaps (R) would be more appropriate.

  8. Duncan Riley

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:26 pm

    Jarret
    yes, the USD keeps dropping. It was actually something like $520.28 (I dropped the cents), figure was calculated using xe.com.

  9. Voices

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:27 pm

    Like Jono pointed out, this is a fake.

    I’m sure the iPhone is just around the corner in Canada, however several of my colleagues already have iPhones purchased in the states and hacked to work on Canadian networks.

    Most business types in Canada wouldn’t leave their homegrown Blackberry’s ( Waterloo, ON — just up the road from my place ).

  10. kyle

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:32 pm

    looks fake to me. somebody made the ad in photoshop and cut the rogers logo from somewhere else.

    even if it’s real, iphone in canada would be ridiculous, because our data coverage sucks donkey balls.

  11. Todd

    October 28th, 2007 at 7:49 pm

    Fake.

    Apple doesn’t do the $0.99 thing with pricing.

    US: $399
    UK: £269
    FR: €399
    DE: €399

    Same price whether you buy from Apple or the carrier in question. I can’t imagine Apple would change that long standing practice for just one country.

  12. Blame Canada

    October 28th, 2007 at 8:01 pm

    I like U.S.A blaming stuff on CANADA.

    1. South park cartoon “Blame Canada”
    2. Canada give open door to terrorist to enter USA.
    3. We lost WTC. Canada refuse to help or pay money.
    4. In 2003. Canada shut down whole new york city & New jersey lights.
    5. Hahah Iphone is expensive in Canada. Canadian can’t afford it.

  13. Markus K

    October 28th, 2007 at 8:04 pm

    A message to Duncan Riley: Stop last minute posting. Its annoying. By this i mean posting 3 stories within 3 hours to make up for a quota your father and commander Michael Arrington asks of you. Just work ahead and dont procrastinate.

  14. gabe

    October 28th, 2007 at 8:07 pm

    $1USD = $.9634CAD

  15. attn: gabe

    October 28th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

    close, but this is closer:

    Live rates at 2007.10.29 03:19:17 UTC

    1.00 USD = 0.959572 CAD
    United States Dollars Canada Dollars
    1 USD = 0.959572 CAD 1 CAD = 1.04213 USD

  16. iProtestant

    October 28th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

    actually, the canadian dollar is at $1.03US. it’s all over the news up here.

    btw, this ad faker than rubber poo. also, apple is pretty good at there pricing in canadian $$ (leopard is priced at parity: $129) . yet even they still have higher prices.

    the minister of finance has called upon merchants to start fair exchange pricing lest we loose a lot of business from cross border shopping. why xe.com still shows it at 96¢US is beyond me. (it moved up and down all the time when it was lower than the greenback).

    probably shame.

  17. unbelievable

    October 28th, 2007 at 8:28 pm

    I am astonished at how this made it on this site at all. The only thing that looks potentially legitimate about that “Rogers ad” is the almost-highway-robbery-Canadian-mobile-pricing that others have already pointed out.

  18. Chris Jacobson

    October 28th, 2007 at 9:05 pm

    I won’t be getting an iPhone until Rogers realizes their data plans are way too overpriced and offer hardly any sufficient bandwidth. It’s too bad, because I really want one. And a 3 year contract is brutal - give me a one year to start, as the iPhone will be out of date by then.

  19. javatyger

    October 28th, 2007 at 9:21 pm

    First off, your exchange rate sucks. The Canadian
    Dollar is worth more then the American one.
    Secondly, the reason its more expensive here is because Apple and Rogers are greedy. Rogers data plans are horrible and are going to gouge consumers.
    Third, bringing up the WTC has no bearing here and you shouldn’t be bringing that tragic occurance up. And as a note, we didn’t going on the stupid invasion bs because it was illegal and just an oil grab by an idiot as a president.

  20. Amy Wilsch

    October 28th, 2007 at 9:27 pm

    well either way their awesome province + federal sales taxes will push it up there :)

  21. Duncan Riley

    October 28th, 2007 at 9:36 pm

    Amy
    My iPhone bought in Palo Alto ended up at something like $427 (or there abouts) due to the Cal. Sales Tax so I wouldn’t gloat too much.

  22. Steve Ballmer

    October 28th, 2007 at 10:10 pm

    IPhone! - Hahahahahahaha $500! Fully subsidized!
    IPhone! - Hahahahahahaha $500! Fully subsidized!
    If that isn’t the most expensive phone in the world and it does not even appeal to business customers because it doesn’t even have a keboard, which makes it not a very good e-mail machine! It may sell well or not, I don’t know, but we have our plan and I like it very much. We have great windows mobile devices in the market today. We have the Motorola phone for just $99, it will play pong, it will do e-mail, do internet, …..
    I like our strategy I like it a lot!

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  23. Markus

    October 28th, 2007 at 10:43 pm

    FYI, it says the prices is for both “1 year contract” and “3 year contract” in the same ad.

  24. ContentConcepts

    October 28th, 2007 at 11:26 pm

    Any news of iPhone debut in India?

  25. steakface

    October 28th, 2007 at 11:36 pm

    With the way the American dollar is going down the toilet, that could be work out to 600$ US or more by December 7. If the US economy continues to tank, it could be cheaper to just buy one in the States, get an AT+T contract with it, and pay the roaming charges. That might end up being only 20 or 30$ CDN per month.

  26. Granov

    October 29th, 2007 at 12:16 am

    ripoff.
    why not cross the border and get a cheap iphone…

    silly sods!

  27. Marc Fiszman

    October 29th, 2007 at 4:02 am

    “Rogers” may be the silliest name for a phone company I’ve ever heard.

  28. micfo.com

    October 29th, 2007 at 5:19 am

    I heard they are unable to manage the supply since iphone is out of stock.

  29. Richard Miller

    October 29th, 2007 at 5:38 am

    Capitalism, Money, market economy, man these three things explain the whole thing to me.

  30. iProtestant

    October 29th, 2007 at 8:23 am

    @marc: it’s a euphemism for rogering. which is what they do to their customers.

  31. Berlin

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:59 am

    Canadians are enjoying this post. They exist!

  32. erwin blom

    October 29th, 2007 at 10:03 am

    In Europe we’re used to being ripped off by Apple. We always pay Macs as if 1 dollar is 1 euro. A bloody shame!

  33. Tod Maffin

    October 29th, 2007 at 11:17 am

    I have my doubts about this.

    First, the small green text is in a horrible font. In a CTA subhead like that, most ad people will avoid (C) and TM symbols unless absolutely necessary. The ones in this ad really stick out.

    Second, the last line of the small print says you don’t find out what the data plan will cost until later. I somehow doubt Rogers is stupid enough to sell an expensive phone (with a mandatory three-year term) without disclosing how much the data would cost.

    Finally, I’ve never known Rogers to split up its logo like that (red circle and text). It’s generally considered to be a no-no in advertising practice.

    This just looks like a fake Photoshop mockup to me. I stand by my original post on this.

    That said, I HOPE it’s true, because I really want to move out of 1.0.2 without bricking my phone.

  34. Benjamin

    October 29th, 2007 at 11:30 am

    Here is the current state of the US dollar when compared to the Canadian dollar… Keep working on those calculations…

    http://finance.yahoo.com/curre.....amp;to=CAD

  35. Dan

    October 29th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

    Amazing …
    Some of you have absolutely no clue which dollar is rising and which is falling and how that affects pricing. As long as the oil price remains low, why bother with anything else right!

    Apple: Creedy
    Rogers: Crazy (but then again, AT&T not much better in rates)
    Dollar: Canada surpassed USD (Keep funding multiple wars!)
    Blame Canada: Comments are useless and ignorant

  36. godmode

    October 29th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

    confirmed fake:
    http://www.canada.com/montreal.....mp;k=46211

  37. Gunfus

    October 30th, 2007 at 2:37 pm

    Okay so is fake.

    But since we are discussing the iPhone, and reading all the coments, it made me think “Wouldn it be ridiculous if Rogers, the only GSM provider in Canada, makes you sign a contract for 3 years (or whatever about of years) with Rogers..?. Like do I have an option to use my HIGHLY expected iPhone in a different network other than Rogers..?”

    What about Fido.. does Fido accepts GSM..? isn’t Fido owned by Rogers..?

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