I’ve heard from more than one place — including at work, oddly enough — that the Jesus Phone iPhone is coming to Canada via Rogers (one of our few wireless carriers) before Christmas.

Mat Ingram points out that the price might be around $CAD 499 for an 8 gigabyte phone for a 3 year plan.

Personally, I don’t think its coming before Christmas, if only that I would have expected there to be some kind of huge marketing run up well *before* Christmas for the iPhone. God knows that you can see enough of them in Canada already by the Canadian faithful who have purchased them across the border (or, who have gotten them through other enterprising Canadians).

There are two other issues, of course, which makes its debut here — versus the US — even more interesting.

Price: Given the recent surge of the Canadian dollar (above par compared to the USD on most days now) — or the fall of the US dollar — there’s a tremendous amount of consumer pressure these days to have comparable products priced similarly here as in the United States. Am I the only one curious to see how Rogers will actually price the iPhone? I’m sure there are daily debates going on at the highest level about the pressure to absolutely ream its customers on the price vs. the public outcry against the artificially high price bump, as we’re on par with the USD now. $499 for an 8 gig model would probably be right, but its still $100 more than the same piece of technology across the border.

Data plan: I’ve written about this before, but its worth mentioning — Canadians pay more per megabyte than almost any one else in the world as it applies to wireless data plans. Let’s compare the plans for the iPhone with AT&T and, for example, a comparable plan with the BlackBerry for Rogers.

The entry plan with AT&T starts at $59.99 and you get “unlimited data and text” with 450 minutes of voice. My eyes almost fell out their head when I read that the first time.

Rogers? For $60, you get 25 megabytes of data and *nothing* else (i.e. no voice). Oh, you do get the benefit of paying an extra $7 per MB for every megabyte you go over.

So am I waiting for the iPhone in Canada? Of course I am. But only because I’ll be interested to hear the consumer debate over the whole issue as, if history is any indication, Rogers will want to milk us for all its worth — and with the Canadian dollar being on par as it is, everyone will be able to quantify exactly *how* large a new one its ripping us.

Or not, perhaps. This morning when stock markets opened, Apple and AT&T stock limped, rather than roared, out of the gate — with Apple prices remaining largely flat.

If you’ve been following the crazed orgamso-frenzy hype around the iPhone, and the Lalapalooza like atmosphere around the Palo Alto Apple store, you might have had a different picture in mind. Heck — I sure did.

But I think that investors (and institutional ones) are looking for harder facts to back up the hype. Namely that Jobs either did too well a job (ha ha, what a lame pun) in stocking his stores with iPhones so that there was no shortage, or that the demand was far lighter than what was actually expected — although I have no feel for how much is “light” in consumer electronics. $170 million worth of merchandise and over 500k units sold seem like a pretty robust to me.

Over the long term I actually do expect this to change for two reasons.

• The iPhone problems will be fixed (one day): Many of the issues around this first generation iPhone will be solved with other iterations of the device, namely problems with ringtones, storage size, porting phone numbers, the overall cost, and other tech issues we haven’t even heard about yet. Apple has a long history of cranking out advanced models at a nauseating clip. First-adopters with respect to the iPod can attest to this.
• Word of Mouth Will Begin To Take Over: Once iPhones are out in circulation, word of mouth will take over from the mainstream media hype. Just like the demand for Wii’s continued well past last Christmas as more and more people saw and touched it, you can bet the same thing will happen with iPhones — in spite of the price.

The interesting thing I found, of course, is the whole disconnect between the tech coverage of the iPhone and the flat stock price. Is it really because techies are first adopters who “get it” in this circumstance? Or is mainstream America wary of the hype? Or, is it really a case of the demand being underestimated? Or, perhaps, is everyone waiting for the price to fall and there to be a change to a faster kind of network?

The iPhone story hasn’t yet been fully told, I think — in fact, now that the release euphoria is over, I suspect its just begun. ;)

[yes, I do own shares of Apple]