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The iPhone Is a Nightmare For Carriers
New submitter HungryMonkey writes "According to the latest EBITDA numbers from AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon, the subsidies they have to pay Apple in order to carry the iPhone are drastically reducing their profits. From the Article: '"A logical conclusion is that the iPhone is not good for wireless carriers," says Mike McCormack, an analyst at Nomura Securities. "When we look at the direct and indirect economics that Apple has managed to extract from the carriers, the carrier-level value destruction is quite evident."' So one money sucking leech has attached itself to another money sucking leech?"
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/01/82-percent-of-atts-q4-2011-sales-are-smartphones-66-percent-are-iphones.ars
Yeah. 66% of AT&T's 4th quarter sales were iPhones. I was on Verizon for years, switched to AT&T only for their iPhone, and stuck with them only for their GSM capabilities worldwide. Sure, your margins are less when you offer a better service. Would you prefer no sales though?
So my android phone is subsidizing your iphone. Nice.
I can't see the problem with this. Phone carriers, internet carriers too since many seem to be doing both, should be dumb pipes. There's no dark side to that.
Don't carriers drop Apple? "We'll lose money on every transaction but make it up in volume" has nevevr worked.
Or, is it that profits are reduced, not eliminated? Value destruction means losing money, not reduced margins. Pretty important to distinguish. If they were losing huge buckets of money, we wouldn't see carriers clamoring to carry the devices. OTOH, selling at reduced margins at high volume can potentially be profit maximizing (e.g., Wal*Mart).
If it was a nightmare, Verizon and Sprint would not have jumped at their chance to carry it. Surely Apple would have been happy to not produce a CDMA version, if no one wanted it.
It's rent-seeking parasitism all the way down!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Its an expensive phone. Are Apple forcing them to give it away? sounds more like "Carriers business model is destroying their profits"
"from the greed-begets-greed dept."?
Ugh.
Is there a way to block stories by editor?
I am amused that, between a summary including "Bull****" yesterday and this one with "money-sucking leeches", Slashdot has abandoned even the thinnest pretense of giving an impartial treatment to each story in the summary.
Apple drug these backward-ass bozos kicking and screaming into the modern phone era, so cry my a river.
When I think of the punitive overage changes these carriers have for data, roaming, SMS texting... It warms my heart to think of their financial discomfort.
For what we pay for cell service in the US we should have a state of the art infrastructure and widespread 4G access.
Carriers are crying all the way to the bank. Anyone selling the iphone has seen their sales jump as people ditch their carriers in a mad scramble to get the hottest phone on the market.
A story came out last week detailing that Apple is now one of the biggest phone makers on the planet. This is from a company who's primary market was computers. Clearly, they are doing something right if everyone wants what they are selling.
If the carriers don't like the iPhone, stop selling it, and watch all your business dry up. That's how the free market works, capitalist pigs.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Which tells me it must make business sense to do so.
#DeleteChrome
Between 2009 and 2010, Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) averaged EBITDA service margin of 46.4% per quarter. In the first quarter that the iPhone went on sale, that fell to 43.7%. Last quarter, when Verizon sold a record 4.2 million iPhones, its margin plunged to 42.2%.
Gee, margin "plunged" from 46.4% to 42.2%. It sounds like their profits have dropped from really, really obscene to just really, really obscene. I need to get out my tiny violin and start playing it for them.
Apple would BUY them at that point or just roll their own. Apple is sitting on a MOUNTAIN of cash.
Good-bye
How is this Apple's fault? The carrier needs to buy the phones from Apple, and they have a cost.
In order to get people to sign up for contracts, they give you the handset at a cheaper price, but you have them locked into a 2 year (or whatever contract).
If Microsoft (or anybody else) came out with the new Super Duper Happy Fun Phone that everyone suddenly wanted ... they'd be in the exact same boat. Because most people aren't going to pay the full cost of a new phone outright. Phones have always been expensive.
Subsidizing the phone cost is a loss leader, which is exactly what is happening. However, over the next two years, how much profits are they going to make by gouging people for the wireless service/bandwidth they've signed up for? I bet it far outstrips the cost of the phones ... it just happens that a lot of people are moving to those kinds of phones right now.
The problem is that the carriers have been unwilling to invest in their own infrastructure to keep up with growth, and now they're whining that the device that people want to have costs more than they can afford in one shot.
I fail to see why Apple (or any phone manufacturer) needs to come down on the price in order to ensure the carriers make money. They can raise the price they sell the phones for, or let another company do it and lose out on the potential business.
If the carriers are giving too much of a subsidy ... well, that's kinda their problem, isn't it? Apple never told them to give it away.
I'm betting the latest, shiniest phones from Microsoft, Samsung, Nokia, and pretty much everyone else are pretty damned spendy. If you give away expensive things, that's what happens.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yes especially when they'll then have customers leaving in droves.
They take a service that everyone wants and many need, yet they still go bankrupt.
Uh huh. Just like how the iPod, iPhone and iPad were going to be huge flops? Does anyone still give these predictions by bitter neck beards any credence?
So one money sucking leech has attached itself to another money sucking leech?
It's more like a "Human Centipede" relationship.
That's basically how European telecom market(s) work. It's good for consumers, lower prices and more competition [than in the US].
Falls to "ALMOST nearly 50% margin."
Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, Heather. I fail to weep.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Even better, if mobile phone carriers stopped selling phones altogether. Most of the smaller ones in the UK have stopped already. Just buy a phone, buy a SIM, combine the two yourself.
Of course, if you look at SIM-only plans, you see how much you're actually paying for the 'free' phone. My carrier, for example, offers a £12 SIM-only plan and an identical £30 smartphone plan. The SIM-only deal is a 1-month contract, the smartphone plan is a 12-month contract. So, if you use it for the minimum period, you've paid £216 more than if you were on the SIM-only plan. The smartphone plan comes with a few choices of phone. The first one I looked at, the HTC Desire S, costs £154 (new) unlocked, on Amazon. Probably less if you shop around.
So, the 'subsidised' 'free' phone actually works out as a loan with an APR of about 40%. If you buy it now on your credit card and pay the bill at the end of the year, you'll still be better off...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The carrier subsidy on the Android phones, especially the fancy ones, also appears to be huge. An unlocked 8 GB Galaxy S2 at Amazon is $600, while a 16 GB iPhone 4S from apple is $650.
Yet AT&T charges $150 for the S II, and $200 for the 4S. So if the carrier subsidy is related at all to the gap between the contract price and no-contract price, the carrier subsidy for an iPhone is no worse than an Android phone.
So its probably not the "iPhone", but just the general trend to expensive smartphones compared with lower subsidy needed feature phones.
Test your net with Netalyzr
I work for one of the UK network operators which had made me develop a new level of hatred for iPhones.
One of the way the iPhone is hurting carriers is that Apple only offer a 12 month warranty as standard, sure you can extend it with Apple Care, but no one bothers even if they take out the iPhone as part of a 24 month contract.
A customer will phone up over 12 months into an 18 or 24 month contract to say their iPhone is faulty, all we can offer is a chargeable repair as the phone's out of warranty, naturally they're not very happy ("I got it from you, not from apple!") and they'll either want to cancel their contract without any sort of termination fee or get a working phone, 99% of the time if they complain enough they'll get a free of charge replacement iPhone just to keep them happy in the hopes that they'll upgrade at the end of their term (and it works out cheaper than having the call escalate further). This is happening hundreds if not thousands of times a day where I work, sure it happens with other brands too, but to a lesser extent and normally with lower price handsets.
I'm shocked that so many people are willing to accept a 12 month warranty on a product that markets its self as the best in the market.
And Apple could start selling phones that weren't locked to a carrier, only for real (GSM/CDMA).
The early adopters and heavy users would still buy them even at $650+, and they'd be able to switch carriers faster than every two years, on the basis of performance and customer service rather than contract expiration.
Be careful what you whine for... you just might get it, good and hard.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
...the subsidies they have to pay Apple in order to carry the iPhone are drastically reducing their [insanely high, customer gouging] profits.
There, fixed that for you.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Make some concrete, testable predictions - say, market share, profit share, stock-price or something of that nature - and I'll see you on 8th Feb 2013.
AT&T sold 7+ M iPhones last quarter (75% of smartphones sold)
VZ sold 4+M iPhones last quarter (50% of smartphones sold)
S sold almost 2M iPhones last quarter
What do you think those companies would look like if they threw out half of their business?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
...then why don't they stop insisting on restricting it, and having custom firmwares/hardwares/whatever for THEIR version of the phone, and instead simply use unlocked, stock, "off the shelf" models. Costs might go down then...
(caveat: I'm from the UK, but i hear it's generally pretty crap across the pond with mobiles)
Carriers shouldn't have any control over which phones work on their network. They should stop selling cell phones altogether.
Sell sim cards. Period. Offer some cheapo phones you don't really care about in your store. But make it obvious that users should really get the actual phone somewhere else especially if it's a smart phone.
AT&T used to sell or even rent land line phones in the early days. If you wanted a phone you had to buy one from the phone company. Today, if you want a landline phone you pick one up at practically anywhere for between 10 dollars for the cheap ones to 200 for the really fancy ones. That's what the wireless carriers need to do.
When they do that apple can't charge a fee anymore. It's just selling a phone. A bit of hardware. And the carriers aren't selling a phone. They're selling a data plan. Because I imagine that "minutes" are going to be a thing of the past at some point. At what point does it become more practical to just skype everything? Does skype cost the carriers more money then a regular phone connection? I wonder. They're obviously turning it all into data anyway. In any case, once all phones have internet the typical phone/voice connection becomes redundant. Just give everyone a data plan. People will stick to email and text most of the time to save on connection charges and that has to use much less bandwidth then a voice conversation.
Just sever the relationship entirely between phone and carrier. Sell sim cards. Then the carriers can anti trust apple or something if apple gets snippy about letting some carrier's sim cards work and others not.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
...to jump on the iPhone giving apple everything they wanted and then some, but some stupid exec felt they just HAD to have it at any price, even though they were doing exceptionally well with Android phones and making way more money to boot. So, they got a few more iPhone subscribers, but now are losing money. Boo hoo. Apple needed Verizon more than Verizon needed Apple, and yet Verizon acted like the guy desperate for the girl. So, they lost. Any normal person could have predicted that action, but some overpaid executive could not. Amazing.
I will play a violin and cry for their loss.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Very little is mentioned about support costs. My experience in North America is that Apple covers it all through Applecare and their retail stores. You may pick it up at an AT&T shop, but Apple has no problem with you coming to them to resolve any issues, and is ultimately a higher quality experience. It sounds like most other phones out there are supported through the carrier which increases their costs for support personnel and warranty replacement logistics. This isn't to say that the carriers do not support the iPhones they sell, but they really don't have to go to the lengths they do for other units.
-- I have an extremely witty sig, but you're not good enough to see it.
Wow, first the RIAA complaining about unfairness, and now telcos complaining they don't make enough profit.
I think the store just ran out out of Worlds Smallest(tm) violins!
So one money sucking leech has attached itself to another money sucking leech?
You have to kill the host, it's the only way to be sure.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Apple isn't extorting subsidies, its more like apple is adding fees because the carriers are exerting market control on their products. Apple wouldn't mind selling more phone,s but AT&T and Verizon would so they lock apple into exclusivity contracts to not open their market up to the competition, and thus Apple raises their per phone charge to offset potential profits that could have been made if they sold their phone more widely.
So the carriers shouldn't be moaning at the cost, and the consumers, are not really the decision makers in this US market.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
The carriers, now you know what it feels like to be on the receiving end. For most customers switching the carrier is not easy, not possible some times due to coverage or something. When you have them over the barrel what do the carriers do? Do they worry about being reasonable? They "maximize the profits" and ask the customers to go to hell. Well carriers, feel our pain and cry us a river.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
. . .That was sales not actual devices active. In other words because a huge number of people updated their iPhone in that time period they sold more than Android did. It didn't change the US market share makeup. Apple is still hovering around 30% and Android around 50%.
The price to a carrier of an iPhone 4S is $600* or so.
The carriers sell the 4S for $200 with contract.
Instant $400 loss.
They do this because, over the course of a two-year contract, they'll make $1700 or so, at a minimum, in monthly charges.
The reason they're all posting losses is that smartphone sales are exploding, so they're all having to eat a lot of those one-time $400 sucker punches right now. As more of their customers switch from their $50 voice plans to $80 text plans, they will start posting profits again.
Effectively, carriers are investing heavily in smartphone hardware so that they can receive a payoff in data plan charges over the next couple of years.
* Apple charges $650 for a no-contract 4S; presumably the carriers get a wholesale discount, nobody knows exactly how much.
As much as I loathe what Apple has turned into the fact that the iPhone causes trouble to carriers, who have a history of screwing with people's phones (e.g., branding) every chance they get, seems like payback which they more than deserve.
All of these subsidies may cost the carriers some money, but they are costing you money as well. The carriers pay for smart phone subsidies with the price of their plans. Rather than laugh at the carriers' misfortune, you should consider this article to be an insight into why your bill is so high. People love Apple for the iPhone and hate the carriers for their ridiculous fees which is exactly how Apple planned it when they required the carriers to subsidize $450 of the iPhone 4S in order to sell it.
Many people with Androids are not using a single smart-phone feature. I guarantee you that every iPhone user is using a smart-phone feature. Apple still may have more smart phones actually used as smart phones than Android.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
Many people with Androids are not using a single smart-phone feature. I guarantee you that every iPhone user is using a smart-phone feature. Apple still may have more smart phones actually used as smart phones than Android.
And that matters why? That's actually GOOD for the carriers as people are paying for data plans they aren't using.
If this continues, phone company executives will be forced to live a life of only semi-luxury.
Come on - All of us Android users are the ones subsidizing the iPhone hipsters, where else do you think they're making up the profits?
> If you praise Apple even a little bit in the comments, you get modbombed and accused of shilling.
No. It's usually mindless superlatives that get you accused of that.
It's like the arrogance of DOS users and the Lemming mentality in the press in the 90s.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Sure, your margins are less when you offer a better service. Would you prefer no sales though?
Sprint announced a large upswing in new customers last quarter -- all because of the iPhone. However, their losses increased, too -- all because of the iPhone. If the carriers lose money because of the iPhone, then yes, no or lower sales would be preferable.
This would be the best thing that could possibly happen to the regional carriers.
When it comes to who actually coughs up a dial tone and an IP address, I couldn't give two shits as long as the service is reliable and available where I am. If Cincinnati Bell has good service wherever I go, and I don't have to pay some 1997 roaming fee for it, what the hell do I care?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Tough luck. Nobody forces you to do that, you know? You entered a business deal, it turned out that it is still profitable(!!!), but not as lucrative as you had hoped or as you have it with other deals.
Stop whining.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Its leaches all the way down.
Sprint announced a large upswing in new customers last quarter -- all because of the iPhone. However, their losses increased, too -- all because of the iPhone.
The losses are a single quarter. The revenue the new customers bring lasts for two years.
And after that there's a great chance Sprint gets to keep them as customers (if they manage things well).
So it can make a LOT of sense to take some loss now for quite a lot of potential future gain (and a lot of the gain is not just potential, but pretty much assured).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They do lose some up-front though.
No.
They may incur more debt up front but they have contractually obligated payments that ensure they have not lost anything, at any point. If you sign up for Sprint today, get an iPhone, and cancel your contract in a month Sprint is still paid more than the iPhone cost by your termination fees.
They do record a loss in one area but that's all accounting fluff that doesn't really indicate how much they have actually lost, you'd have to also look at the contracts and subscriber base as assets (which they are).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Their products are OK but the underlying business practices taint the name, it seems there are worms in the Apple and it isn't so sweet to bite a piece off.
Slave trade, Over priced, monopolized, but if you're a stock holder and you ave no shame congrats!!!
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
A quick comparison shows similar subscription plans cost the same regardless of iPhone or similar capability Android is bought. If Apple charges such premium of the carriers, shouldn't the rest of us realize reduced subscription cost??? What IS the value-proposition the carriers add beyond "dumb pipes"?
Uh huh. Just like how the iPod, iPhone and iPad were going to be huge flops? Does anyone still give these predictions by bitter neck beards any credence?
If their sense of market forces is in any way associated with their sense of humor, then no.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yeah, and at 4am local, you might even get 100 mb. In the evening, when all the other cable subscribers are on, getting 100mb is going to be quite unlikely. Cable companies, just like phone companies, habitually oversell their capacity.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You have any facts to back that up? It's almost impossible to have a smart phone these days and "not use a single smart-phone feature". Your logic makes no sense considering every Android phone has to have a google account attached and requires you to register over the internet, automatically pulls your gmail email, automatically uses the android market for updates etc. These are "smart-phone" activities.
I buy a phone. Who cares what type. I go to my carrier and subscribe to a voice/data plan. They give me a SIM and I plug it into my phone. They don't know what brand. The phone manufacturer doesn't know from whom I'll be buying my bandwidth. Nobody kicks money back to anybody. Everybody makes money based upon the value of their product or service.
End of story.
Have gnu, will travel.
I have to say that occasionally I see that, but I play devil's advocate alot, so sometimes I am on Apple's side, sometimes against Google etc. Yet, I don't get mod bombed. It could have something to do with HOW the fanboys are putting the information on the screen, rather than what they are putting there.
As far as I can tell, Apple is NOT taking a chunk out of the carrier's monthly fees. But to sell the more expensive phones, they have to give bigger contractual discounts. With the fees they're charging, it might take six months for the monthy fees to accumulate to be equal to the subsity. It may take the entire contract period for the profits from the monthy charges to be equal to the subsidy. That may be a long time, but it's only a quarter of the contract period, and meanwhile, they're raking in better volume profits because the iPhone sells so damn well. Of course, more phones means more network congestion, but the congestion is just a result of the carriers cheaping out on infrastructure. It amazes me how whiny the carriers are given the huge profits they report every quarter.
Right, because all those user who now have NO phone service on their iPhone, won't be pissed at all. There would be class action suits by the hundred against Apple and the carriers.
Apple would BUY them at that point or just roll their own. Apple is sitting on a MOUNTAIN of cash.
A MOUNTAIN of cash that would be completely insufficient if they wanted to set up their own national wireless network.
It's also insufficient if they wanted to buy out a bunch of regional kiddies and then eat the difference between what they charge customers and what AT&T/Verizon charge them to piggy back on their network.
Cash on hand / market cap is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to valuing a company.
Me thinks their numbers are...skewed. http://www.itproportal.com/2012/01/30/apple-iphone-reaches-8-3-global-mobile-phone-market/
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
-- Guy Inawig
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sorry, should have clarified like so:
AT&T sold 7+ M iPhones last quarter (75% of smartphones sold by T)
VZ sold 4+M iPhones last quarter (50% of smartphones sold by VZ)
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Sometimes I'll offer some pre-sales advice before transfering to the correct department, normally if I'm discussing options regarding which handset they're going for it's because the one they have is faulty or have changed their mind about it within our cooling off period.
I'm always completely honest with the customers, I'll tell them I'm biased towards Android and if they phone back and speak to another person they'll get completely different answers and the next person will also give them a different answer as there's no such thing as a best phone.
I think the iPhone is a great gadget, I'm always honest in saying it's a great choice if you want something that just works, but I see Android as a happy medium between iOS and Blackberry. Your average non-technical customer doesn't need an iPhone, they also don't need a Galaxy S2 or a Nexus.
On our network you are paying for the name, you can get a Galaxy S2 for less than the iPhone 4 8GB (not even the 4S) and you're getting more minutes with the S2. If I'm speaking to someone who just uses their phone for calls and texts and doesn't want anything else neither of them would come into the conversation unless the customer brought them up anyway as a feature phone or one of the low end Android handsets would do nicely.
Mainly the iPhone comes up in conversation because it's the one phone everyone knows, I'm happy to discuss the pros and cons of any phone with them, but I'll also be up front about the cost (around £900 over 2 years to get the phone for "free", that's with no data and at least two times more minutes than your average customer needs). Normally when I'm discussing Android it's as a replacement for a feature phone and they'll end up with something like the Galaxy Ace or the HTC Wildfire S, Windows 7 phones are cropping up a bit more these days.
In general terms based on my experience people who want iPhones will stick purely to iPhones, people who use Blackberries will normally stick with them too, you'll get the occasional person who will stick to one specific brand, but most often people see it as iPhones vs Blackberry vs Everything else.
In terms of issues we get with phones we get amazingly few issues with malware, they may go undetected or it might just not be a massive issue, I'm not sure.
My advice to friends and family is always to take out a SIM only contract and buy whichever handset they want outright, it's going to cost more up front, but you'll save a lot in the long term.
It's leeches all the way down anyway ;)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Whoever wins... we lose.
Glad I could help.
I'm more concerned with who has more smart phones that are used to spread PB & J on bread to make sandwiches.
What do you really care about? The actual marketshare and make up of the market, or just some pissing match to find a way to make your brand come out on top? I'm considering adding this to the list of topics not to discuss at a dinner party: politics, religion and Android vs. iPhone (really just brand loyalties).
Well, what they operate is like a series of tubes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Many people with Androids are not using a single smart-phone feature. I guarantee you that every iPhone user is using a smart-phone feature. Apple still may have more smart phones actually used as smart phones than Android.
Actually the opposite is true. Most Iphone users tend to use it as a dumb device compared to Android users who tend to use more features.
It's just that Android has more features built in, rather then having to be made up by third party applications.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yes. This article explains that the carriers have gotten to the point where they give away Android phones for free. Soon, all of the phones will be smart phones and feature phones will go by the wayside, but that doesn't mean the users will use the phones for more than making phone calls and texting.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
This article is just isn't true. There is about $50 per 2 years difference in the subsidy for Apple vs. RIM, Windows, and Android. That's real money but it doesn't kill the margins. Right now the carriers are moving huge numbers of people over to smart phones, but they account for the smart phone subsidy as an immediate loss. The subsidy issue will go away once the number of smart phones stabilizes which should be in about 3 years.
As far as the infrastructure improvements that's a much bigger problem. And certainly Apple is driving that since it drives up data usage. And the move away from unlimited is because the new generations of smart phones use much more data.
Are you implying that Apple users are more tech savvy or that somehow people who purchase an Android phone only know how to text and phone people? The last feature phone I owned was a Sidekick XL so it has been a little while and I know feature phones can now access basic email but really, you're arguing that the people who are paying 20+ USD a month and NEVER uses the internet? Yeah, I don't think so. Apple does firmly have the lead in sales of apps but I would argue that Android because it has a larger hobbyist base they tend to introduce apps that don't cost anything rather than .99 cent apps. I could be wrong, it is merely anecdotal.
Also to the AC - normally "market share" is defined as the share of the market they own or have installed into. If it's a quarterly report of sales they'll say quarterly market share. In other words the numbers day to day are fine but the numbers overall are more indicative of the health or strength of a brand/OS.
Well that sounds like a reasonable approach. I have to say the wireless world is far different there than in the U.S., here you are going to pay the same for service even if you don't subsidize the phone (except for a few third party carriers that are just not as good in terms of service).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The answer, I think, is “Not many“.
in the source equate to actual statistical value? The entire article is speculation and "my friend thinks".
Thanks for the interesting reply; I think this cuts to the heart of things.
People see value without effort as unfair, and yet everyone is striving to attain this.
In Europe, people buy their phone at true market prices. iPhone 4s is starting at 629 euros = 833 US$ in Germany.
Telecoms gives little discount on longer contracts. But contracts are cheaper. In Europe you only pay for outgoing calls.
6 hours talk, 6GB data, unlimited SMS/MMS, free calls to the same providers subscribers: Typical price is $26/mo on most prepaid providers.
3 hours, 3GB data, unlimited SMS/MMS, free calls to same providers subscribers is around $18/mo.
After hitting data max, speed will be throttled from 4Mb/s (limit on theese small packages) to 128 kbit/s. No extra charge.
If you attach blood sucking leeches to each other till you join the first the last in a complete circle, you have a pretty good representation of the current global financial markets.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
> is it that profits are reduced, not eliminated?
Succinctly put: Thugs (carriers) love making money, however they hate it when someone else (Apple) out-thugs them for a larger share. They're throwing a tantrum.