After frequent visits to the United States of America one month Sandy Hutchens a Canadian business man found himself with a cell phone bill in the multiple hundreds of dollars with an array of long distance and roaming charges. When Sandy Hutchens complained to his local Canadian cell phone service provider he was met with a customer service representative that could not speak English and probably was not proficient in Canada’s second language of French.

The representative was probably located in a third world country were even there they have cheaper and better cell phone providers and they were not able to help Mr Hutchens with any of the unexpected costs that were incurred on his visit to the other side of the border. Their only solution was to add an expensive long distance plan to his phone that would be billed every month whether it was used or not.

After speaking about this Fraud with some of his other business associates Sandy Hutchens was made aware of an alternative option. They told him to buy a U.S. phone. Sandy decided to take this advise and during his resent visit to the states he bout himself an American sell phone and to his surprise he found himself in cell phone heaven.

First of all his experience in the local cell phone store was superior in service and support to that of any other that he had experience in his past fifteen years of using a sell phone. He received a free phone with the purchase of $50 worth in cell phone minutes billed to the second at 10 cents per minute to virtually any place in the World. This is considerably cheaper to any plans that Can be found in Canada.

The bottom line is the best thing you can do the next time you travel to the states is stop in to the first cell phone store you see and pick up an American phone it will save you a bundle of cash and prevent you from becoming scammed by the Canadian cell phone companies.

Market research firm Isuppli Corp. today released a research report stating that the iPhone will generate more than a 50% gross margin for Apple — nothing unusual for them. That basically means that Apple is pocketing $250 for every iPhone it sells. Compare that with the average gross margin of 10% to 20% for handsets and you’ll see where Apple is really relying on fan loyalty to gouge.

In a recent interview, Steve Ballmer chortled when asked about the iPhone. Not that I would normally take anything seriously that a Microsoft executive would say about an Apple product, but in the interview posted above he makes two very good points: 1) $500 for a phone is outrageous when you can get the same features on another cell phone for less than $100; 2) The iPhone has no keypad, so it’s not business/text-message friendly.

Then you have to consider iPhone’s competition. In 2007, it’s estimated that there will be 835 models of music-enabled phones introduced by various Apple competitors. iSuppli estimates that 14 phones already shipping — from Nokia, Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and LG — have features comparable to what the Apple iPhone will have when it ships in June.

But Jagdish Rebello, a PhD, and director and principal analyst with iSuppli, says Apple knows its market and is good at displacing competitors.

People just love the iPod. Why, I don’t know. There are plenty of cheaper MP3 players with the same functionality on the market, but hey, it’s Apple. Apple equals anti-establishment, and therefore, it’s cool. So I have no doubt that Apple will sell the 8 million iPhones it’s aiming for this year. And, with a total of 1 billion handsets being sold every year, those 8 million iPhones are only a fraction of the marketplace. So why the rant?

It’s the principle. It’s like Boston Red Sox tickets. The team wins one World Series, and they go about gouging their fans. Apple gets a big win with its iPod and it believes it can gouge the consumer on a follow-on product.

It’s very likely that when Cingular begins selling the iPhone, it will subsidize a portion of the cost — so the consumer won’t have to foot the full $500 bill — at least that’s the hope. But until I see it, I won’t be running out to buy it.

The iPhone is cool technology — you can’t help but ogle the interface — but like PS3, you’d have to be out of your gourd to pay that kind of money for something that’s basically whiz-bang with no more substance than other cheaper, comparable products.