Unbeatable is reporting that the reason Three hasn't revealed the iPhone 4 UK price is that the company is waiting for the other 4 providers to reveal their prices so that it can undercut them all.
I think we rightly or wrongly assumed that networks would offer pre-orders from June 15, but as we see, the only place to get an iPhone 4 at the moment is at the Apple store. It appears now that the networks are in no real rush to get prices out and are waiting for each other so they can undercut each other. O2 were first with the tariff pricing and revealed those last week. Orange were the first network to reveal tariffs and the cost of the iPhone 4 subsidised. Vodafone accidentally leaked the prices earlier this week although they could be due to change. On to T-Mobile, they seem to be waiting till next month to introduce the iPhone 4. This leaves us with Tesco (who use the O2 network) and Three (who want to undercut everybody).
Although it's quite frustrating not knowing if the better option is to get a SIM free iPhone 4 for £499/£599 or to wait for contract prices, what we do like is that all the major networks in the UK are in competition with each other which will hopefully drive prices down a little allowing some of us to get a better deal. When I say some of us, not everybody can get a new contract due to being locked in elsewhere.
The information about Three waiting to undercut everybody comes from Three UK employees. According to them the operator is in discussion with Apple to make sure they are the cheapest on the market. We have seen Three being quite aggressive recently with the iPad micro SIM pricing it at the same £15/month as everybody else but offering far more data per month. This leads us on to believing what Unbeatable say in that Three want the best prices.
We have another week till the iPhone 4 UK launch, so for now we'll sit tight and hang on for more networks to reveal plans and pricing.