But at 15 bucks maybe gotta wait to see what the ebay scalpers will do to the price point. You save about 35 bucks off the e71 route. Still can't wait to find out what the differences are.
I don't think there are undercutting anything. Perhaps they ran the models and it showed that managing and servicing these crappy phones and forcing it on their customers is not as profitable as just selling a tiny piece of plastic and building a loyalty of users that will buy their airtime cards without hesitation.
I don't think there are undercutting anything. Perhaps they ran the models and it showed that managing and servicing these crappy phones and forcing it on their customers is not as profitable as just selling a tiny piece of plastic and building a loyalty of users that will buy their airtime cards without hesitation.
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I'm sure they have created a model or something like you mentioned. But that is the micro picture. How can AT&T or even tmobile be happy with them endorsing bringing phones that require contracts to be used without contracts? Before it was a backdoor that probably a small amount(compared to at&t or tmobiles customer base) knew about. There's a big difference between looking the other way and promoting the use of GSM phones on their service.
1. They lose money on the ST Nokia smartphones. So if your just going to buy the phone for the SIM, why not just sell you the SIM card and make a profit instead of a loss.
And when I say loss, I mean overall loss. Lets say they break even on the phone itself, but factor in the 1 year warranty, returns, etc and they will take a loss. With this SIM only, they don't have to worry about the phone at all. The SIMs are cheap to replace.
2. They are facing fiercer competition because people want real smartphones. Thus they need to respond to this new and growing market of smartphone users.
3. This ST SIM $45/mo strategy will increase their average revenue per user (how much they make per subscriber).
The thing is, there is increasingly more and more MVNOs offering $50 Unlimited Talk/Text and some data. This is no longer rare.
ST says unlimited data and we know this isn't true. I think the bottom line with data is most people use very little and the ones who abuse it, ST can just kick them off. They get very good wholesale pricing from AT&T and T-Mobile, theres no doubt about it; so they can offer that Unlimited Talk/Text and some Data for less than $50 thanks to their lower wholesale price.
1. They lose money on the ST Nokia smartphones. So if your just going to buy the phone for the SIM, why not just sell you the SIM card and make a profit instead of a loss.
And when I say loss, I mean overall loss. Lets say they break even on the phone itself, but factor in the 1 year warranty, returns, etc and they will take a loss. With this SIM only, they don't have to worry about the phone at all. The SIMs are cheap to replace.
2. They are facing fiercer competition because people want real smartphones. Thus they need to respond to this new and growing market of smartphone users.
3. This ST SIM $45/mo strategy will increase their average revenue per user (how much they make per subscriber).
The thing is, there is increasingly more and more MVNOs offering $50 Unlimited Talk/Text and some data. This is no longer rare.
ST says unlimited data and we know this isn't true. I think the bottom line with data is most people use very little and the ones who abuse it, ST can just kick them off. They get very good wholesale pricing from AT&T and T-Mobile, theres no doubt about it; so they can offer that Unlimited Talk/Text and some Data for less than $50 thanks to their lower wholesale price.
I agree but they need the major carriers to provide service. Unless they have agreement not to market this at all why would anyone choose AT&T/Tmobile/Sprint.
I agree but they need the major carriers to provide service. Unless they have agreement not to market this at all why would anyone choose AT&T/Tmobile/Sprint.
Because people still want subsidized phones and people will continue to go to AT&T/T-Mobile/Sprint. Pay $99 upfront and an arm and a leg over 2 years is preferable to the general US population.
The thing is, the big carriers don't want low ARPU customers. They've always relegated that market to the MVNOs. On top of that, I would say with LTE being the hot new wireless tech, 3G/HSPA is increasingly going to have spare capacity. They may as well sell the capacity to MVNOs than squander it.
No doubt they came to the realization that packaging their SIM`s in a Smartphone wrapper was not the most cost effective way to sell their service. Their main profit item is Airtime.
Limited Unlimited will remain. The question is will limits on T-Mobile data useage differ from that of AT&T?
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Originally Posted by stonedcold
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