"If I were king for a day..."
The cost of a smartphone reflects just how powerful these phones have become. To snag one off contract, you'll likely end up paying upwards of $600. If you're willing to sign a two-year contract, you can get the phone for $200. That's a lot of savings and it's the reason carriers make you sign a contract. Their logic is that if they're going to subsidize the cost of your phone, they need to ensure they'll make that money back from you before you leave the network. Though this is often profitable for the carrier, it seems not all providers are fans of subsiding customers' phones.
T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Cole Brodman was recently quoted as saying that carrier subsidies are hurting the wireless industry. Speaking at the GeekWire summit in Seattle, Brodman said that if he were king for a day, he'd get rid of carrier subsidies. Brodman's opinion is that these subsidies devalue the hardware.
"It actually distorts what devices actually cost and it causes OEMs, carriers — everybody to compete on different playing fields,” GeekWire quotes Brodman as saying. "And I think it is really difficult, especially from a consumer perspective, because it causes consumers to devalue completely the hardware they are using…. It is amazing hardware, but it has become kind of throw away. So, it is unfortunate, you’ve got dual-core, multiprocessor devices with amazing HD screens that get thrown away at 18 months."
Though Brodman said if he could have it his way, there would be no more subsidies, he said T-Mobile's competitors don't seem to want to do the same, which makes it hard to compete.
"It becomes difficult because consumers vote with their pocketbooks, and they will almost always pick a low device price oftentimes over a low rate plan price or a bundled rate plan price," he said.
Carriers would also compete on price for the plans more aggressively rather than the gouging they do currently in North America on most carriers.
Tl;Dr Tablets should be more expensive than phones, not the other way around.
Tl;Dr Tablets should be more expensive than phones, not the other way around.
Carriers would also compete on price for the plans more aggressively rather than the gouging they do currently in North America on most carriers.
I like this model however. I can pick up used HW for a song, precisely because this sales model devalues HW. If you only think you paid a hundred or two for it, you'll sell it to me really cheap, right?
I love a sucker.
They all overcharge for the hardware and service, that is the only reason we sign two-year contracts.
Your logic is flawed. Your are not paying a lot more money because the carriers do not offer a cheaper price when you bring your own phone. They are ass-raping us with jackhammers in this country. There are only two GSM providers which means you can just get another simcard. All of the rest are CDMA which means they lock the phone to their service anyway and blacklist others.
I am sure this t-mobile ass-clown is just saying this for good pr. If they really were about the consumer, they would discount your rate after your contract was up.
You have to switch to a prepaid plan if you want the cheap off contract prices. I only pay 30 bucks a month for a smart phone with 5 gig of data on T-mobile. It's good enough for me.
Actually, your post is flawed because you quite clearly can talk shit but you're too dumb to do a little research first. T-mobile offers a ton of plans that are cheaper without a subsidized phone. Value plans are cheaper with a sim card, monthly plans are cheap and don't include a phone, and prepaid plans are cheap. Using a value plan you can get the same thing on Tmobile as on Sprint for $30 less, without a phone
Handsets being locked to a carrier has nothing to do with carriers subsidizing the cost of the handset. CDMA phones are locked to carriers due to the networks they use. Also, you can't use a CDMA phone on a GSM network.
With T-Mobile's network and business practice....that deal would still be a rip-off. Unless they've changed their practices, T-Mobile is the only carrier that rounds up usage.
I also think subsidizing phones is bad because if the consumer breaks their phone, they would have to pay the full price for the phone. Of course one could go through ebay or craigslist to get it cheaper than retail, but those prices are still very high.
Like t-mobile said, the subsidizing makes us throw away a phone after the contract is up, which is a complete waste.
If the phone are unsubsidized, the carriers could then lower the cost of plans because they don't have to recoup their loss from subsidizing your phone. Also unsubsidizing the phones will allow the phones themselves to compete instead of tying them to a carrier.
The only problem, of course, is trusting whether the phone is/can be unlocked without the help of a carrier (Google is your friend here), and if the phone was stolen. If it were stolen, then the ESN (if it's CDMA) may be blacklisted, and you end up buying a $150-$250 paperweight unless you know how to clone your ESN from your old phone to that one (which can get you in BIG trouble if you're caught)...
i want a use iphone or android, one of the better ones, to use as a bar code scanner/portable camera.
if i go through a store... well i get screwed there, because they sell it barely cheaper than new
if i go through a person... well i could spend 1-200$ on a stolen phone and if found out by cops, ill be out a phone and 1-200$ because of stupid laws.
"Well then it isn't free, is it? Which makes you a liar."
They certainly and obviously don't charge a carrier more than an end user for a phone, but they charge them quite a bit, and one thing it points out is how much money they make off of your subscription. Those phones aren't free for anyone, you are just signing up for a "pay (for the phone) as you go" plan - one that never ends, because the price doesn't drop after the phone is paid for.
I suspect that one reason Brodman wants to see the sales method go away is that there is not as much per-minute profit on the services as there used to be when the model was established; it takes longer to get the company's investment cost back than he would like.
The "incentive" I want is a lower cost on my service, not an introductory price break that I pay for in said service, ultimately many times over.