Can’t happen soon enough, in my opinion. Yes, most people don’t want to pay $600-$700 for a brand new smartphone when they could be paying $200-$300—remember the original iPhone?—but the true costs have always been hidden. Your subsidy is built into your phone plan, but even after you’ve finished the usual two-year contract, at which point your phone should be paid off, your bill doesn’t go down. Madness.
I think this is one of the biggest potential threats to Apple’s iPhone sales. With subsidies, if you don’t upgrade your phone every two years you’re leaving money on the table. And it’s only $200 or so to get a new phone. But how many people would upgrade every two years if they actually had to pay the full price? And with hardware improvements that are more incremental than in the early years?