Analysts have praised Apple’s announcement to lower the price tag of existing iPhone handsets reports vnunet with Apple announcing the offering of existing 8GB iPhone 3G handsets for $99 at WWDC 2009.

Gartner research director, Carolina Milanesi said “This is pretty much in line with what we were expecting. It is right thinking to keep the current products to widen the market, and offer a new price point and memory option. The market is more challenging now, so price adjustments will be very welcome.”

The move by Apple may attract new customers to the iPhone that couldn’t afford the iconic handset before, and will also be a fairly hard blow for the Palm Pre which saw its launch on Saturday.