Australia’s mobile phone carriers may not completely grok Apple’s new iPhone 3G, but they know it’ll bring them customers — because they’re all scrambling to be Steve Jobs’ iPhone bitches. It’s an embarrassing spectacle.

Three carriers have announced packages available from tomorrow: Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. (Presumably 3, who’ve been asking their customers to beg for iPhones, haven’t bent over far enough.) There’s a comparison over at news.com.au.

According to my sources, all three Aussie telcos have bent over even further than US carrier AT&T. Apple already demands a bigger subsidy from carriers than other smartphone manufacturers. In the US, for example, AT&T pays Apple US$325 per unit compared with the usual $200 or so. However two individuals working within Telstra confirm that all three telcos offering iPhone here are also paying Apple an ongoing percentage of revenue. AT&T has escaped that revenue-sharing deal, but not the Aussies — and that’s presumably reflected in the somewhat disappointing plans on offer.

All three Australian carriers have missed the key point. Yes, iPhone can make phone calls. But its true role is a pocket-sized internet-connected computer.

In May, by my count 80% of the audience at Australia’s Mobile Content World conference were so out of touch they’d never even seen an iPhone screen. “They were deer in the iPhone’s headlights,” wrote entrepreneur Rand Leeb-du Toit. “The full browser experience is going to shake their businesses to their foundations.”

Overseas, data from the first year of iPhone users bears this out. They conduct 50 times more Google searches than other phone users. In Germany, they consume 30 times more data.

Australian iPhone plans are all skewed towards cheap voice calls and expensive data.

As John Allsop’s analysis points out, on Telstra’s data packages just looking at the smh.com.au home page would cost you $8!

When Vodafone release its pricing yesterday morning, comments on Twitter were scathing. “Vodafone gives you 5GB on modem. but all telcos have weighted plans for calls, not data. Wrong wrong wrong,” said one. “Nice to see Vodafone continuing the theme of gouging iPhone customers,” said another. And: “Boo Vodafone Australia iPhone plans, Optus here I come!”

Without a doubt, Apple’s new iPhone 3G is sexy. It will be a huge hit. But it does have flaws.

Just one of the Top 10 reasons to hate the iPhone 3G is the sealed-in battery. A year from now, when you no longer get a full day’s usage from one charge, your choice is $100-odd for Apple to replace the battery or $199 for the new model. Like the iPod, consumer replacement cycles get ever shorter, and the mountain of toxic used electronics grows — just like Apple’s profits.

[Note: This article is based on material I wrote for Crikey yesterday and today.]

When user experience expert Oliver Weidlich of Ideal Interfaces showed them screenshots of the iPhone on the big screen, around 80% of the 150-odd audience sat up, alert, seeing it for the first time.

Huh?

Sure, Apple’s groundbreaking product isn’t officially available here until the (rumoured) 19 June opening of slick new Apple stores in Sydney and Melbourne. You don’t have to have bought into the whole Steve Jobs personality cult, bought one overseas and hacked it for Aussie networks. But if you claim to be professional and haven’t at least read about the iPhone a year after its release you should be shot.

Serial entrepreneur Randal (Rand) Leeb-du Toit thinks the industry has got it very wrong. The iPhone changes everything. “They were deer in the iPhone’s headlights,” he wrote. “The full browser experience is going to shake their businesses to their foundations.”

And the iPhone is completely different. “When you take it out of its box, it feels like they’ve built this product with you in mind,” says Leeb-du Toit, who’s been using an iPhone for a couple of months. “A mobile phone feels like it was designed by an engineer with engineers in mind, by the people who put the content on there, the telcos’ walled gardens.”

A lot of the conference was about getting users watch the content from big TV, movie and games houses. Twice the guy pimping one content management system said, “It’s all about creating a more addictive experience for young people.” What sort of ethic is that?

One session talked about “bringing the lounge room experience to the small screen”, which seems as sensible as bringing the tennis experience to the swimming pool. Meanwhile, iPhone users download stuff that’s meaningful for them, connect to their own computers to access their own data and, according to Google, generate ten times the search traffic as non-iPhone mobile users.

“The carriers see they’re about to be hit by the truck, so they’re over-analysing and over-complicating the situation with all their business models about content,” Leeb-du Toit told me. “They should be going open and simple.”

It’s appropriate that the conference was held at Sydney’s Star City Casino. Anyone ignoring the iPhone is gambling big. The dice are rolled 19 June.