Essentially you just said only the 5C was free, just to clarify. I never did hear about that but not surprising since AT&T usually hasn't been good in areas where I lived so never paid attention to their offers.
The 5C was just one example. From 2010 to 2015 or so you could get whatever the entry-level iPhone was at the time (3GS, 4, 5, 5C, etc.) for $0 either to retain you as a customer (they were petrified of people leaving ATT for Verizon) or to entice you to add a line (for your children mostly, it was no cost iPhone's that started this whole situation of having 10 year olds with smartphones)
The paragraph talking about the free 8's IF you bought an X AND added an account doesn't qualify for free in my mind. You paid for the 8's if you had to give somebody money for something to get them.
Well, I had a 12 year old son and he wanted an iPhone for Christmas and I was going to spend $349 for the entry-level iPhone and add him to my plan at $35 no matter what, there was no way around that. So AT&T giving me that phone for free to entice me to add him to my plan was free money. A dumb decision on their part but I guess they had their reasons. You have to remember, when your kids turn 11 they start badgering you for an iPhone and it doesn't stop until you get them one. I was going to spend $349 and thanks to ATT giving them away that Christmas of 2011 or whatever it was I didn't have to. That's not bogus. That's free money.
It's like BOGO in my mind. Folks right here on MR have argued that since they got the second one "FREE" it must be true. But try and get that free item without paying for the first one, ain't going to happen. All you really did is get them at a huge discount. But they weren't "free".
But congrats to you on being a wise consumer and saving money where you could.
So in the past 7 weeks I have purchased 4 iPhone X's 256GB Space Grey:
Mine: $1450 via Craigslist to avoid the one month wait at launch.
Wife: $1250 when the AT&T version I preordered on launch night finally arrived.
Son: $699 by calling AT&T loyalty department.
Son: $699 by calling AT&T loyalty department.
Wife and I have been ATT customers since 1998, got our first iPhone's with the 3GS in 2009. The boys both got their first iPhones, 3GS', for $0 back in 2011 or so, only had to add them to the plan for $35 a month each. The 2 half priced iPhone X's didn't increase our plan rate or incur any fees whatsoever.
...and if I added my 4 year old (would never, but as an example) last week I would have gotten a $0 iPhone 8 simply for paying $35 a month like the rest of us. And, by the way, that's for unlimited talk/text and data plus tethering.
Free iPhone's years ago, half priced iPhone X's now. This is the way it was/is in America with AT&T, can't speak to other carriers.
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We didn't really get free (well, $0.99) iPhones until 2011.
The line up was:
2010
iPhone 4 $199
iPhone 3GS $99
2011
iPhone 4S $199
iPhone 4 $99
iPhone 3GS $0.99
Yes, data plans weren't required for flip phones (albeit most supported basic WAP by then). However, you can be sure carriers expected that $15-50 mandatory data plan for iPhones to be mostly gravy. They were caught pretty unawares by the heavy network load from smartphone users. At one point, the lowest data plan offered was 200MB data for $15/mo. I expect that's pretty negligible load on the network so that gives us an idea of how much the subsidy is back then (~$15 x 24 = $360).
It wasn't until after the failed AT&T/T-Mobile merger where AT&T gave T-Mobile $4 billion in cash and wireless spectrum that we started seeing active competition among the Big 4.
Please read this article which explains, quite clearly, what a burden the subsidies were for the carriers:
https://betanews.com/2012/06/07/iphone-kills-carrier-profits/
"The primary reason for iPhone's dependence on carrier subsidies is that all models are high-priced, high-margin products for Apple. So even though a subscriber may get an iPhone 3GS for free or an iPhone 4 for $99 on a two year contract, carriers still have to pay Apple an average subsidy of roughly $400 - $450 per device. Meanwhile, Apple's competition is diversified across price points, receiving an average of $200-$300 in subsidies per device. On average, it is safe to assume that iPhone receives an incremental subsidy of $150 per device, when compared to the competition.
There are numerous estimates of the cost of acquiring a wireless subscriber. According to
one estimate, the cost of acquiring a wireless subscriber ranges from $300 to $400.
Another estimate measures this cost at $250 to $300 per customer. A
research report from 1998 also estimates this cost as $400. Since estimates seem to be fluctuating even over such a long time frame, we can make a safe assumption of the cost of acquiring a customer as the high end of the ranges mentioned here, i.e. $400. Most reports also mention that acquiring a new customer costs five times as much as retaining a current customer, i.e. $80. So, the incremental cost to replace a subscriber would be the difference of these two, i.e. $320.
Costs savings due to reduced churn is only 27 percent of incremental subsidy cost for AT&T and 45 percent for Verizon. This means AT&T is actually losing a net figure of more than $2 billion, while Verizon is losing nearly $1 billion, due to high iPhone subsidies. Verizon's gap is lower because it sold fewer iPhones than AT&T."
