Could anyone not see this coming?  Especially after the cut in price from T-mobilein Germany, where you can get your iPhone for 99 Euros.  Reported this week that 02 and the Carphone Warehouseare dropping the price of the iPhone by 100GBP.  A substantial drop by any measure.  Although, if you have purchased one in the past 30 days they are giving refunds of 100GBP back to make up for this.  O2 is also upgrading existing customers (activating their handsets before 1st February) to one of the new iPhone tariffs.  It is worth noting that Apple shops are not (or haven’t yet) dropping their price…and that the price drop only applies to the 8GB version of the iPhone.

It does raise some questions.  Is the cost of the iPhone at 269GBP to prohibitive for most people?  Is 169GBP more affordable?  After the massive debut, is it now just not selling?  Have people figured out that although it is an amazing interactive experience for a phone, it lacks a good camera, 3G and the ability for developers to release their own applications?

There are a few reasons going round the internet as to the price drop.  A 3G version of the iPhone was announced by Steve Jobs last year, to be released this year.  O2 may simply be trying to get rid of their stock before the new version comes out.  Apparently you can get the iPhone at this price whatever contract you take out.  This ’special offer’ is to remain in place until 1 June, and someare suggesting that this may be when the 3G iPhone may be released.

The price of the iPhone dropped in America last September.  Apple took $200US off the price and as you can imagine this left a lot of existing iPhone customers very unhappy, although Steve jobs promised a $100 store credit to anyone who bought an iPhone before the cut in price.

I think the next couple of months are going to be filled with rumours about the next iPhone, but I am glad that I resisted the temptation and went with the Nokia N95 8GB.  I am looking forward to seeing the next generation iPhone though…