Android and iPhone price war coming to UK?

Now the Android Market is in full swing and making money for developers, it’s more important than ever for both Google and Apple to get their hardware into the consumer’s hands.

For the most part, people are only going to own one of these new range of feature rich smartphones, such as the G1, iPhone or new lines such as the Palm Pre or BlackBerry and Windows Mobile handsets. Since most also require a contract, owning two handsets really isn’t an option for  users.

It’s apparently already begun in the US, as ITPro points out, with an aggressive push to promote the T-Mobile G1 through significant price cuts. Amazon and Costco both placed reductions on the handset prices of the G1, which all weigh in a lot cheaper than any current UK deals.

Now rumours are circulating that T-Mobile is poised to follow suit over here, and that O2 is watching carefully, ready to fight it out as Vodafone lands the exclusive rights to the HTC Magic (the ‘G2’) - another likely contender in any smartphone price wars.

Already there’s speculation that O2 is preparing to reduce costs on the current iPhones in preparation for a new model, though Nano and other rumours have been bouncing around for a while now without substantiation.

Either way, the feature rich handset market is beginning to fill up, and manufacturers and providers will need every marketing tool available to make theirs the most attractive to a consumer base that only has room in their pocket for a single device.