Fortune mag says AT&T to do $200 iPhone subsidy

This is smart stuff.

A $200 subsidy that brought the phone price to $199 would entice some. It should reduce some of the iPhone unlocked grey market. AT&T is effectively paying $200 to Apple every time an iPhone is sold -- its likely Apple is giving that up on the back-end. AT&T may also retain exclusivity on the iPhone for a longer period of time. I would hope it easily gets Apple over their goals of 10mm iPhones for the year.

It also would put the iPhone's pricing squarely on top of the price of a Blackberry, not a good development for Research In Motion. RIMM's eggs are temporarily more in the CDMA basket for the next quarter because of the Verizon and Sprint Curve rollouts, so the near-term impact isn't going to be much, but it's going to make the second half, post the June iPhone rollout, a much tougher grind for RIMM, which is probably pretty vulnerable today.