iPhone now available as refurb

Apple's iPhones most probably are acceptable quality controlled pre-production run models that were built when the company was learning how to assemble their product and train workers. Although the yield - percentage of good versus bad products - starts off relatively low, this rises until management are happy they can make sufficient numbers of good ones and keep their costs low. Test boxes are used to check phones and find defects. As producers learn to make their products more reliably, the number of defects-per-unit falls until first time pass rates are about 88percent. At that point, they are prepared to launch/release the product. Bear in mind that most computer producers have a yield of around 70-80percent first time pass rate! That means one in five at least are fixed in the factory just after being put together. Sampling will likely have been undertaken at distributors, who are 'last chance filters' before batches are distributed to stores. If more than a given number are found to be defective, the batches will be returned to the plant for re-opening and re-testing. Any reworked (repaired inside the assembly plant) units probably will be considered 'seconds' and have been released as 'refurbished' - another word used in reverse logistics talk to express a state of being up-graded. In effect, most of the refurbished products simply were not accepted by distributors because they had inspected and found more than an acceptable percentage of defective goods per batch.
Phones fail because of dust inside the product under the window, faulty connectors, user interface failures – pic-cells not working, buttons that stick down or don’t work, and bad batteries and not recognising authorised chargers. Sales packs may miss parts, wrong plugs on adapters – US plugs in European sales packs for example.

I order my on monday, got it on wednesday in a white refurbished box. I put 250 songs on it and one movie. Its the 4 iphone. doesn't take long to fill it up. I showed it to my friends,everyone seem interested in in. "Oh you have one of those iphones" AT&T is a pain to deal with .. for reason they didn't like my street address and it took a while to get though activation. If you have alot of songs .. go with the the 8 gig one.. thats my 2 cent on the iphone.

Well, the $100 price drop on the refurbished units worked because I couldn't resist and have now bought one and switched to AT&T.

No matter what, Apple doesn't lose a dime on these phones because even though they make a $100 less than they would selling them full price and new, they get a cut of the revenue of people like myself who buy one and sign up with AT&T. Add to that the fact that they got some good words said about them in the first weeks as people got easy replacements for broken phones which are now being resold.

It's all a conspiracy...

I ordered one of these yesterday and got it this morning. It came in a white refurbished box, not a new black iPhone box, so I think it might actually be refurbished.

i'm with ashley on this one... my 8 gig refurb is in the mail :)

Marketing scheme, refurbished or brand new, I ordered one of these babies.

i agree with scott (in hope he is right) i cant stop cheasin cause i have waited till school startes to get the phone so i will not blow my money on it until i saw it was worth it but at 499 for a 8gb and a even more tempting 399 for a 4gb in my mind the iphone has left the iphone vs ps3 status and is know on iphone vs. xbox 360 and since the iphone does not overheat or get a extream pink eye i am happy to say iphone wins i am buying mines thursday.

Yeah, this kind of pisses me off a bit.

I could see $50 off for refurbs, but $100? Makes me fell like I've been had. Yes, I've had the phone since the day it was released, but still ...

"I hate to say it, but this what the prices should be for new units."

By "should" do you mean what you want to pay?

It appears that there are several hundred thousand people who collectively have paid Apple the current prices who don't agree with your "should." You are saying that Apple "should" have left more than $20M on the table?

Supply and demand doesn't dictate that the current price will be what _you_ want to pay. For some items, like the iPhone, you won't want to pay the current asking price, but others will.

For other items, you would be willing to pay more than the current price. Do you go around saying that those items should be priced $100 more?

I agree with JohnPQ. The prices are way too high from the start. You should check out iPhailure.com for some good alternative views on the iPhone