Live blog: iPhone 3G S launch day
Apple's iPhone 3G S goes on sale Friday at 7 a.m. in all time zones, and we have a team of people in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area covering the launch. — At Apple and AT&T stores in Manhattan, eager first-day buyers try to get their hands on Apple's upgraded smartphone Friday morning.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two years after the original iPhone premiered at Apple Retail Stores — when CNET's follow-up noted supply lived to sell another day rather than selling out — the third-generation model arrives on an established annual rhythm. Last June Apple cut the entry price to $199 (iPhone 3G officially starts at $199), converting the phone into a mass-market device, and this week's launch inherits that playbook.
The run-up framed modest expectations: the June 11 WWDC keynote ended without a second 'magical' iPhone model (matching device IDs kept the rumored matte prototype alive but unconfirmed), leaving the 3G S positioned on speed — 7.2 Mbps HSPA, the fastest U.S. 3G flavor — rather than new hardware categories. The day before launch, AT&T set tethering at $55 per month, which Appmodo flagged as potentially stacking on the existing $30 data plan for up to $85 monthly. Syndication was broad but mixed: PC World ran unboxing photos while Engadget's headline said the 3G S 'fizzles out' for global retail — a U.S.-first launch.
First-order effects
- First-day buyers queue at Apple and AT&T stores in Manhattan and the Bay Area from 7 a.m., with AT&T's exclusivity making its stores the only co-launch channel alongside Apple retail.
- AT&T's $55 tethering price becomes the most contested line item of launch week, landing on top of the existing $30 data plan just as customers sign contracts.
Second-order effects
- The 7.2 Mbps radio pushes real traffic onto AT&T's network faster than prior models, turning the carrier's backhaul capacity — not Apple's hardware — into the visible bottleneck of the upgrade cycle.
- Rival carriers watching the tethering surcharge gain a pricing talking point, while global markets left waiting by the staggered rollout face pressure over why the 'fastest iPhone ever' isn't fastest to reach them.
Third-order effects
- If the annual-refresh cadence holds, carriers rather than handset makers become the recurring decision point for upgraders — contract terms, tethering fees, and network quality increasingly determine whether each summer launch converts.
- A launch pattern that skips whole regions invites regulators and foreign carriers to question exclusive-carrier deals, the structure that made AT&T the sole U.S. gatekeeper for three generations of iPhone.
The trend: Smartphone launches are settling into a yearly cadence where the carrier relationship — exclusivity, data-plan pricing, and network readiness — shapes the story as much as the device itself.