According to a report by JRPG analyst Lisa Thompson, Apple is “believed” to be negotiating with British mobile operator O2 to sell a subsidized laptop in the United Kingdom (you can find a full PDF of the report here). The idea, apparently, is that if you sign up with O2 as a, say, a two-year subscriber, and buy an iPhone 3G (operating it on the O2 network), then you’d get a Mac at a subsidized price—most probably the cheapest model out there, the low-end MacBook, whose price recently dropped to $1000.
While it is true that Apple has already conducted similar deals with Canadian telco Aliant, that’s not a 3G deal, it’s basically a monthly fee to cover the cost of the computer and the Internet access over three years. That’s not really the same thing as what other UK operators like Vodafone are doing: selling a stripped-down netbook with a 3G connection.
Given that Apple already doesn’t officially allow iPhone 3G tethering, it seems highly unlikely that Apple would pull something like this, even in the UK. Further, O2 has previously denied similar rumors.
I could see a deal where Apple drops the price by, say, 5 percent—à la the education discount—but not something on the scale of what O2’s rivals in the UK are already doing.
