Canadians: Should You Buy an iPhone Now or Later?

I’ve been asked this quite a bit lately by many Canadians via email–“Should I buy an iPhone now or later?” Well, to be honest this is a tough question to answer. It will depend on your preference really: are you a person that NEEDS the absolute latest and greatest iPhone? In that case, maybe you should wait. Currently all online Apple Stores show the iPhone is “Unavailable”. It has been confirmed by Apple that its online stores are indeed OOS. The rationale behind this is to prevent the torrent of returns leading up to the release of the upcoming 3G iPhone.

We now know that the iPhone is indeed coming to Canada, plus it has been announced similarly in a flurry of other countries around the world. Here’s a quick recap of the iPhone’s worldwide “Great Long March” according to Wikipedia (too bad it hasn’t been announced in China yet):

United States: June 2007

United Kingdom, Germany, France: November 2007

Ireland & Austria: March 2008

Canada, Australia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, India, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Singapore, and Uraguay: TBA in 2008

With all of these countries above ready to sell 3G iPhones once they have been announced, I can easily see Apple meeting their target of 10 million iPhones sold in 2008. All I’m hoping for is a decent “all you can eat” data plan with Rogers. It might be wishful thinking, but we’ll have to wait and find out!

On the other side of the coin, if you don’t really care which version iPhone you end up with, maybe you should buy one now. You can pick up a few deals on Craigslist, eBay, and Kijiji as current iPhone users put their units for sale in anticipation of the soon to come 3G iPhone. We know the iPhone “online community” is figuring out ways to put the latest firmware on the first generation iPhone–so it’s not like the unit will be out of date or anything!

As for myself, once the 3G iPhone is announced in the US, I know I’m heading down to get my dirty paws on one. As for the unit I’m using right now? I’m going to give it to my significant other to use. Aren’t I nice? =)

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