While preparing for a panel at Arisia entitled Early Adopters and Not on why people choose to be early adopters, I was trying to find the price history of the Iphone. Since I couldn’t find a web site that presented historical price data on the iPhone, I decided to put something together myself. I’ve decide share the table I created so other people won’t have to repeat my efforts.
One of my reasons for generally not being a super early adopter is that you price a huge premium for having the latest or great gadget when it’s first released. And if you wait a little bit you can get the same or better gadget for a lot less. Because the iPhone price is entirely set by Apple, it makes an interesting case study on how much the price of technology drops over time. The official price of the iPhone periodically drops, as shown in the table below. But, there are no sales and a new iPhone is never sold for less than the official price. (There are occasionally sales on the refurbished iPhones for example on black Friday the refurbished 3GS was sold for $50.00 instead of the usual $150.00.) Finding historical street price data is harder than historical MSRP data. For the iPhone both prices are the same.
The table showing the historical price is included below. Note: I’m sharing this table because I couldn’t find anything like it online. There may be some errors or omissions. For example, it’s possible that I didn’t include a price change or there is an iPhone model I don’t know about or some of the prices are wrong. The table only includes new iPhones within the United States. In case you’re wondering I don’t own an iPhone (I decided to go with Android instead).
| 1st Gen 4GB | 1st Gen 8GB | 3G | 3GS 16GB | 3GS 32GB | |
| 29 June 2007 | $499.00* | $599* | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 5 Sept 2007 | Discontinued | $399 | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| June 2008 | N/A | N/A | $199 | N/A | N/A |
| June 2009 | N/A | N/A | $99 | $199 | $299 |
David, Thanks so much for this overview! It’ll be interesting to see how quickly iPad prices shift over the next two years.
its like when the motorolla razor came out. everyone wanted them. and now they are pre-paid type of phones. same thing may happen to the iphone.
Thanks for the details. I was looking for the price history of iPhone. Would you also keep it updated.
Hey there, dear sir, fantastic site!
Hello David/ Kimbery Ladner :
I am student of OU at Hong Kong. For preparation of my assignment.
Your information is useful for me.
However, I would like to have more information about the function or feature of those iPhone coded by you. Pls advice how can I get it or where can I get it? OR would you get a help to me.
1st Gen 4GB, 1st Gen 8GB,3G ,3GS, 16GB,3GS, 32GB
Thx
May
Hi May,
Glad this blog post has helped you.
My suggestion is to look at the two Wikipedia pages listed in the sources section at the end of the post. Hopefully, they’ll have the information you need or point you to a place that does.
Good luck.
David
Thank you very much for sharing. Very useful article. Let’s see what happens for the iPhone 5..
Tolle Homepage, konnte viel informatives sehen danke.
just what i need to show my girlfriend… we are discussing price history at the moment and i guess somebody thought of doing one. Thanks a lot for the list
IPhone ??????
I know there will be an iPhone SDK. I was thinking about buying the original iPhone but now im not sure. Is the iPhone SDK an actual phone or is it a software u can download onto your real iPhone?
Thanks alot! I was looking for information on the prices of Iphones. Are you going to add the prices of the iphone 4 and 4s ?
Is there any updated List of the actuall Prices for the new Iphones in 2012. I like your list here as now i can compare the prices from then until now and make a chart for my school project Thank you
I’ll work on updating it.
Hi,
Did you update it yet? When can we expect the next update? Thank you Apo