Apple iPhone to cost £595-£660?

Well with all things said and done the iPhone at the moment looks not just to leave a small hole in your pocket but indeed a crater because the 4GB model will come in at a slice under £600 while the 8GB could be as much as £660 according to some early, pre-order prices on Amazon Germany. This compares to approximately £255 and £306 in the US.

So just like Bill Gates, Steven Jobs has demonstrated that like most successful mega-companies he doesn't know how to do currency conversions correctly. I know that there is some talk of inflation among the Sterling but come on Jobs that's really pushing it. Imagine if Jobs was our Chancellor of the Exchequer; what would his proposal be 20% tax for the super rich like Roman Abramovich and Lakshmi Mittal and only charge a meagre 75% for those on the lowest incomes!

Ok so enough of the small talk check the following facts:

- The iPhone will be 3G when it arrives in Europe but it will not arrive for a year – not the end of 2007 as expected.

- It will be a closed device and will only run software released by Apple.

- It will use Apple’s DRM software FairPlay which, ironically, no one thinks is fair, at all. This will help tie people into bought music from iTunes, unless they opt to play DRM-free MP3s.

- Apple could win the right to use the iPhone name in Europe, thanks to a loophole says Outlaw.com.

“Trade mark specialist Lee Curtis of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, has found a legal loophole, though, which could strip Cisco of its European rights. He told technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio that in Europe a person can lodge a revocation application against a trade mark registration if the trade mark has not been used for the past five years.” Read more about that here.

Now obviously many weren't expecting the phone to be the same price as in the US but talk about milking it. If I did currency conversions like this in Maths then God help me.