$99 iPhone at Walmart soon

New York, December 9: United States’ biggest retail giant Walmart is circuitously unveiling iPhone in its stores. Several Walmart employees have been quoted in certain newspapers saying that two models of iPhone priced $99 upwards would be launched in Walmart stores nationwide by the last week of December.

Ashley Hardi, spokesperson for Walmart, defies the statements in part saying, “at this time Walmart has no official announcement regarding an iPhone for sale,” however, she does not completely discard the probability.

The pace with which Apple’s iPhone has continued to expand its smartphone market share gave rise to the speculation that Walmart, being the nation’s top retail chain, could be the next to carry Apple’s flagship operation to dominate the entire smartphone industry.

Analysts say that if the rumors are actually true, Apple would benefit every way; as iPhone launch at Walmart would also serve as the gateway for iPod market revival and the smaller version of the device would nicely fit the current iPhone portfolio. Apple has been selling 8MB and 16 MB iPhone devices for $199 and $299 respectively.

Already, iPhone market has been generating increased revenues with every quarter for AT&T and “this would mean only more business for AT&T,” said Ken Dulaney, vice president of Gartner Research.

“All the carriers use retail suppliers to expand their channel and keep down costs. This is not AT&T competing with Walmart”, Dulaney said.

Moreover, it’s not the $99 price tag but the service which is likely to amass most of the revenue. iPhone users need to sign up with data service provider AT&T for a data plan. The basic iPhone requires data plan that costs at least $30 a month for unlimited web access and another $5 for 200 text messages or $20 for unlimited texting.

Even if the customers do away without data plan and use iPhone only for its music functions, that too would boost Apple’s music sales. Thus, either way, apple stands to benefit.

Piper Jaffray, senior analyst, Gene Munster, has forecasted that iPhone would account for 18.4 percent of company’s total sales in 2009.

So far, iPhones are sold exclusively at AT&T stores and Best Buy Inc.