1. The US consumer does not know the true value of a phone. Most of our phones are heavily subsidized, so most people in the US expect phones to come in at $29.99, $59.99, or $99.99. The true cost is hidden due to those stupid lock-in contracts. iPhone is at least helping to change the value problem as they refused to let ATT subsidize the phone. Amazingly though, we still got locked into contracts. Anyway, since most people refuse to pay more than $100 (except for tech-sophisticated Slashdot readers), there is no incentive for the carrier to offer a broader range of higher-end phones if they can't get the volume behind it.
2. The carriers place so many requirements on the phones that manufacturers almost have to customize the full-phone to meet their needs. This is expensive work that makes phone development more difficult. A company cannot afford to customize ALL their phones to a particular carrier without damaging their business in other parts of the world. I love the UIs on some phones, but I never see them at VZW because VZW requires manufacturers to do it their way. I believe Nokia tried to fight this with them, but it looks like even they've lost.
3. The people buying the phones are your Grandpa and Grandma. They have no clue who you are and what makes you different. There are a lot of really "kickin'" phones in the world, but Grandpa likes the boring old silver ones. The RAZR and iPhone are extreme outliers caused by ATT willing to take a risk and make VZW look bad.
4. Carriers don't want to hold inventory on hundreds of models, and trust me, there are hundreds of models out there. They need to keep their costs low and they partially do this by managing their inventory carefully. Carrying 75 phones in your store is not effective.
5. They could just let you use unlocked phones, but they don't want the "revenue leakage". Opening the market to new phones means you might get to load up music you already own on our phone (Sony-Ericcson phones) or use Wi-Fi to surf the web at Starbucks (Nokia N95). Reducing their SKUs allows them to better control how you get content to the phone.
Honestly, we should all be calling our congressmen complaining about these practices. The technological sophistication of the mobile phone market in the US is falling way behind the rest of the world. They are seriously laughing at us and why we put up with this.
Slashdot Mirror
1. The US consumer does not know the true value of a phone. Most of our phones are heavily subsidized, so most people in the US expect phones to come in at $29.99, $59.99, or $99.99. The true cost is hidden due to those stupid lock-in contracts. iPhone is at least helping to change the value problem as they refused to let ATT subsidize the phone. Amazingly though, we still got locked into contracts. Anyway, since most people refuse to pay more than $100 (except for tech-sophisticated Slashdot readers), there is no incentive for the carrier to offer a broader range of higher-end phones if they can't get the volume behind it.
2. The carriers place so many requirements on the phones that manufacturers almost have to customize the full-phone to meet their needs. This is expensive work that makes phone development more difficult. A company cannot afford to customize ALL their phones to a particular carrier without damaging their business in other parts of the world. I love the UIs on some phones, but I never see them at VZW because VZW requires manufacturers to do it their way. I believe Nokia tried to fight this with them, but it looks like even they've lost.
3. The people buying the phones are your Grandpa and Grandma. They have no clue who you are and what makes you different. There are a lot of really "kickin'" phones in the world, but Grandpa likes the boring old silver ones. The RAZR and iPhone are extreme outliers caused by ATT willing to take a risk and make VZW look bad.
4. Carriers don't want to hold inventory on hundreds of models, and trust me, there are hundreds of models out there. They need to keep their costs low and they partially do this by managing their inventory carefully. Carrying 75 phones in your store is not effective.
5. They could just let you use unlocked phones, but they don't want the "revenue leakage". Opening the market to new phones means you might get to load up music you already own on our phone (Sony-Ericcson phones) or use Wi-Fi to surf the web at Starbucks (Nokia N95). Reducing their SKUs allows them to better control how you get content to the phone.
Honestly, we should all be calling our congressmen complaining about these practices. The technological sophistication of the mobile phone market in the US is falling way behind the rest of the world. They are seriously laughing at us and why we put up with this.