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It Costs $450 In Marketing To Make Someone Buy a $49 Nokia Lumia
benfrog writes "According to market-share estimations compared to marketing dollars, it costs nearly ten times as much to sell the Windows Phone-based Nokia Lumia as it does to buy one. Other analysts agree with the low sales numbers."
What's *really* weird is that the iPhone has some of those same limitations and yet it is wildly successful ...
I wonder what the key differences are ?
(I already have an idea, just curious what the /. crowd thinks...)
Nokia was a giant in the cell industry but has been slipping lately.
Slipping? That's an understatement. Go check out the 1 year graph. You can't even see today's price because it's lost under the markers at the bottom.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
In the US. Here in France we now have competition. You know, that thing you are supposed to have in a free market? Before the three incumbents happily fixed prices and had to pay massive fines - not enough to get them to stop though. Now a fourth player (Free) has entered and true to their history, they have completely turned the market on its head. Overnight you got 20€/month contracts (unlimited national calling and to landlines in 40 countries, 3GB data with no usage restrictions - yes that means torrents! NO minimum period, 16€ if you get it with quad-play) with no phone supplied. Want a nice phone but can't afford to shell out 400-700€ in one go right now? Fine, get a 20€/month contract, put down 100-150€, and pay the rest per month over 12, 24 or 36 months (not everyone offers all options but most offer a few). It's completely honest - if you want to change provider that's fine, you just need to finish paying your interest-free loan in a lump sum. The other operators now offer similar deals - they had to. Say what you like about consumerist capitalism - if you want cheap, high quality communications then you need a truly free market and it will happen!
Heineken and a few other breweries are the only ones that will give a loan to the owner of the bar, since bars and clubs are a high risk investment and most banks won't get involved. Because the breweries aren't banks, they don't have to hold themselves to a lot of regulations that forbid banks from controlling their loaners too much. This means that the breweries often end up owning the building after a previous business goes bankrupt and now most bars and clubs are effectively owned by the breweries. Once they figured out this method, they started to actively buy real estate that houses bars, restaurants and clubs. The real kicker is that those bars pay more for their beers than you and I pay for the same beers in the super market. The innkeepers have to pay rent, make a living and pay their staff, so variation is hard to find and prices are inflated due to the lack of competition this sort of practice brings. Add to that the high alcohol tax and it's no wonder that bars and clubs are such a high risk investment....
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Dumb phones are still going, but how long they will last is anyone's guess.
Well, basically, I think they will last for a very long time.
At least until a smart phone becomes cheaper than a dumb phone - which imho is possible considering a smart phone doesn't have all those mechanical buttons a dumb phone has. And a dozen or so buttons may very well be more expensive to produce than a single touch screen display.
And even then there will likely always remain a market for simple phones that do one thing, and one thing very well: making phone calls.