Best Buy is the third electronic retailer this month to slash the price of the Apple iPhone 4 in half, where it is selling the smartphone for $49.99 in stores across the United States, according to the franchise and a report on CNET Thursday.
RadioShack and Target reduced the price of the iPhone 4, in both black and white, last week to $49.99 and marked down the prices of the iPhone 4S, which has voice program Siri, by $50, so the 15 gigabyte version will run a consumer $149.99, and a 32GB edition will go for $249.99, confirmed by their official Twitter page and website, respectively.
The reduced-priced iPhone 4 generation smartphones will however require a two-year contract with its three Apple-brand phone carriers, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and Sprint, noted CNET. The discounts on the iPhones for all three retailers are for in-store purchases only, not through their respective websites. Target and RadioShack confirmed that their sales would run through the end of June 2012, though no end date was given for Best Buy's discount.
No particular reason was given to why the iPhones were set at discounted prices, though CNET said it may correlate with the possible release of Apple's next-generation of iPhone, with a rumored release date of October 2012.
Reuters announced this week that Apple made arrangements with three Asian suppliers, Korea's LG Display, Sharp Corp, and Japan Display Inc, a Japanese government-brokered merger which combined the production of the screen amongst the three companies, to make wide 4-inch screens for the next generation of iPhones, possibly starting as soon as this June.
Speculation have also been made that the next-generation of iPhones, which currently have not been given an official name by Apple but have often been called the iPhone 5, may go into production as soon as this August, though the company has yet to confirm anything regarding the new version of the iPhone to the media.
