How much do people pay for their wireless handsets? Why?
I got mine (original and replacement) for free. They weren't the newest or fanciest models, but they certainly served their purposes. My new one does a lot more than I expected it to.
At retail, including carrier-owned stores and kiosks, most handsets seem to be for sale, not for free with plenty of buyers. At Verizon stores, all were for sale, though on the Internet they had free promotions. At Cingular, they had some for free as part of a promotion.
Some of the handsets weren't cheap, like around $50.
I think the new iphone has some neat features, though I'm not sure if its tiny screen will have much utility in reading stuff without either strong eyeglasses or extensively scrolling. However, I can't imagine it offers that much utilty so that people will pay hundreds of dollars for the phone plus a great deal more every month for the various services to make use of it.
[But what do I know? The mayor of Philadelphia was in line at 3 a.m. to get his unit. He says it helps his productivity and will be better than his Blackberry. He got criticized for wasting time in line, but said he was still productive.]