The Apple App Store is a phenomenon all in its own right. There are now over 100,000 apps in the store – that’s over 100k software applications available to everyone and anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch.
And the number is rising every day, not least because the demand is rising. There are more and more iPhone users every day. Apple saw its iPhone sales hitting almost 25 million units in 2009.
The iPhone is not a cheap mobile phone in itself. Certainly, many owners got their new iPhone for either free or far less than its true price, because they signed a 12, 18 or even 24 month contract with the phone network carrier. For this reason, the network carrier reduces the cost of the iPhone to the user.
But if your iPhone were stolen or damaged you would have to pay the full replacement cost. Currently this is £550 for the iPhone 3G-S and £350 for the iPhone 3G in the UK, while in the USA the iPhone 3G-S is $600 and the iPhone 3G is $450 to $500.
Now given the high rate of iPhone theft and the potential to damage your iPhone accidentally, that is not a cost you want to have to expose yourself to. According to Continental Research, 1.3 MILLION phones are stolen every year – and over 2 MILLION phones are damaged every year.
So you can start to see why the demand for iPhone insurance is so high. You really don’t want to have to pay that amount of money if your iPhone is stolen or damage. But in line with the cost of the handset, and the unfortunate high fraudulent insurance claim rate on the iPhone, the insurance premiums are higher than for other cell phones.
Now in a curious twist of using the iPhone technology itself to help this situation, an iPhone app has been created which finds secret discount codes and web pages which are not otherwise available on the internet. Users of this http://www.iPhoneInsuranceApp.com free app simply enter their name, country and email address (the secret link to the discount will be emailed to them later) and they can then save money on their iPhone insurance.
This app, called “Insure Me” in the Apple App Store on the iPhone, is proving popular already for this very reason – it saves money.
