Why Our Family Won't Be Buying an iPhone

With all the hoopla surrounding Apple's iPhone release, lines already forming at the Apple store in New York City, and a news story everywhere you turn about the latest service plan detail and review of the most-hyped phone ever, you'd think everyone would be running out on June 29 to buy an iPhone.

Grab the reins. Much as many of us would like to, the fact is most families will not be switching services to add one or more iPhones into our cell phone mix, even if you've got a teen begging for one. At $500 (4GB) and $600 (8GB) a pop, the pricing is prohibitive, even though the service plan options are actually quite reasonable for a smartphone that browses the web, displays email, plays music and videos, takes photos, and doubles as a personal organizer.

Even the most optimistic predictions say that Apple will grab 10 percent of the smartphone market this year—that's 2 million out of 20 million smartphones. And most teens are not walking around with smartphones.  

The skeptical among us will sit back and see how the service deal with AT&T goes before we make the leap to another provider. Or wait until other providers, including Verizon (which is big in my neck of the woods) offer iPhone deals. Who wants to trade what has finally become reliable 3G service for the slower EDGE network? (Check out Gina's post for more on that downside.)

By the way, have any of your kids ever dropped an iPod? They're not the most sturdy personal electronics items around. And I'm guessing (without yet holding one in my hands) that the iPhone and its glass screen may not take a fall as well as a regular old cell phone or even my Palm Treo.

Most families have already taken on pretty sizable monthly bills to finance their kids' instant communication habits—and laid out a good bit for iPods (in lots of cases more than one). So I'm wagering most of us are going to wait out the grand unveiling, watch as the market settles, and see if the prices fall within a more a reasonable sphere.

I'd love for my kids to have cutting-edge communication and entertainment technology, sure. But I'd also like for them to go to college. I say that only half-jokingly. If we keep upping monthly bills for cell phones and everything else our kids want, that goal becomes more elusive.

Besides, my kids are more attuned to the unveiling of another kind of wizardry this summer—the July 21 release of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." They know that since J.K. Rowling's book is the last in a series of seven, there truly will be no other iteration of this hyped release.

Related:

Real Cost of iPhone: Service Plan Revealed
Why I'm Not Getting an iPhone 
The Hype-o-Meter: Revisiting the Mega-Anticipated Products of the Past