It's because all Android has done is blurred the line between smart phone and feature phone. It's Android phones now that are the free and BOGO phones and that's exactly what Google wants--a base out there that they cannot be excluded from for their primary business, advertising.
To reinforce this point: advertisement's like the linked ones would be illegal in Australia, and the vendor would be heavily fined and/or forced to deliver the phones for free.
Ads here have to display the minimum cost over the terms of the contract, which makes it slightly easier to compare them.
Of course, this means that telcos do stuff like making plans that include "$300 of value for $30/month", which is an absurd claim when they set the calling costs too, and vary them depending on the plan.
The only sense I can make of people who continuously write this point, is that they will always be making some monthly payment for their phone. Therefore, they do not count that monthly payment, and only look at the upfront fee.
The monthly bills are different depending on the phone. Finding out the real price of the phone is not as easy as just looking at the subsidized price.
0$ phones are also not magically “free” in the US. You pay it with your monthly bills down the line. The subsidized price is never a meaningful metric for comparison, it is in itself not a reasonable metric for comparisons.
I have always been puzzled by this attitude which seems to be rampant with Americans. Don’t you notice something’s up when somebody offers you something for “free”?
> 0$ phones are also not magically “free” in the US.
Yes, they are -- the only benefit will be contract/no-contract. Pay full price and come back two years later and tell me it's not free.
> The subsidized price is never a meaningful metric for comparison
It's not subsidized when you pay the same monthly rate regardless (T-Mobile being the exception)
> I have always been puzzled by this attitude which seems to be rampant with Americans
It's not an attitude; it's an acceptance of reality. I'd like a discount with Verizon if I bring my own phone but I'm not counting on it anytime soon. Not sure what's puzzling about that.
Wow. You pay the same price even if you bring your own phone?! That’s just crazy. How is that even possible? You should get pitchforks!
The phones are obviously still subsidized, you just don’t get a phone for free. It’s just that they presumably also overcharge you if you bring your own phone. Wow! That wouldn’t fly in Europe.
I think it stems from incompatible networks (GSM vs CMDA).
Since you can't take an out-of-contract phone anywhere else (with some exceptions), signing a new contract for a free or reduced-priced phone is your best option. Other companies can't use reduced rates as an incentive to bring in newly-out-of-contract customers with a perfectly working phone.
It's created a consumer mentality where getting your phone from the carrier is just the way it's done and signing a contract is the best value.
> It’s just that they presumably also overcharge you if you bring your own phone.
Sure, you can look at it that way but the average consumer here has accepted that you get your phone from the carrier so the idea of being overcharged doesn't even cross their mind. They look at it as getting something in return for signing a contract and making a commitment.
Dear YooLi: That comment specifically addressed the misleading, US only, practice of advertising phones as free when they are no such thing.
That goes to the heart of this discussion. In the US, the iPhone is marketed as a premium product apparently because it isn't available "FREE". In fact, the total-cost-of-contact is pretty close between say an iPhone and an Android phone with similar specs.
Again, another BULLSHIT post. The dominant Android phones are overwhelmingly the high-end phones that retail in the $600-$700 range. They all come with thousand-dollar plus contracts. There may come a time where such a blurring occurs, but it won't be until the cost of data contracts significantly drops. And you can bet that Apple will be fighting for that market as well.
What does dominant mean? Because I can tell you that from the folks that I know here who work at our phone company (including one who was privy to their negotiations with Apple over the iPhone), it isn't sales. The lion's share of android phones being sold here are the less expensive feature phone replacements.
Sure thing, CountSessine. We all have that inside person who validates our bullshit opinion
I do. My wife works at a telco with a couple million handsets on its network. The 'negotiations' they had with Apple are well known among the company's managers. But thank you for playing.
Again, Android's dominance has been on the backs of Motorola Droids and Galaxy S' and HTC Evo 3Gs, and the like. All high-end phones.
And again, I'm telling you that that's not what's happening now in 2011. When the Droid/Milestone was king of the hill in the Android world, Android's marketshare was a fraction of what it is now. What's changed is that Android has set the low-end of the market on fire. There's no reason to buy a feature phone anymore. This is also the reason the software attachment rate on Android is so low - cheap people don't buy software.
But you keep trying to make yourself feel better as you clutch, desperately, only your iPhone.
That link basically says that Jan-Jun 2010 Apple sold just under 3% of all smart phones in the world, but they took in 39% of all profit made in that sector in the same time period. It's really astounding what they've been able to do this relatively established market in just 3 or 4 years. No wonder everyone else was so blindsided.
Apple isn't after market share or any metric in particular, they never have been. They're after making great products they want to use.
I mentioned this above in relation to a different article about the same numbers, but that's not smartphone share, it's phone share. Since the phone market is mostly cheap, commodity items it shouldn't be a surprise that smartphone vendors have bigger profits than their phone share would indicate. Mostly people are impressed by it, because they think it's smartphone share. Perhaps they're mislead because some of Apple's competitors compete in both markets?
To create an android phone, means writing an OS, giving it away, and trying to get hardware developers, app developers, and advertisers on board. That is not going to be easy,
Microsoft might have a chance, if they started to give away their OS, but probably not.
