Techs & Trends
America gets screwed
The industry did this to themselves too - they didn't have to make the phones free. That's what killed the average dollar amount. On top of that, it also made people feel that, since it's free, it isn't worth treating properly, so they'll just let their 3-year-old stuff it in their mouth for an hour and wonder why it stopped working.
I'm not bitter. I swear.
The only phones people will spend 80-100 bucks on that I see stateside anymore are Treos, RAZRs, or Blackberries.
I would rather buy a phone outright than be locked down in a contract. I don't make a metric ton of cash a year, I work for a celltelco service center, so I know the importance of having a decent phone. (which, the 361, and 367 are pretty awesome!) And most people who are on this website now have a decent grasp of what's going on, and why we dont need to be carrying the cream of the crud.
What charges??? I don't know, poisioning an idustry?
I get customers ALL the time that think they deserve a free phone everytime they renew their contract because they got a free one when they signed up. On top of that say things like "what I have to pay for a car charger too"?
I mean come the F* on... seriously.... You don't see people calling AT&T asking for a free house phone, and more long distance minutes, and credits on their bill just for being customers....
Because of this free phone crap todays customers don't want/think they should have to pay for anything, and that if they do pay for anything then the company is just sucking money out of them, and the customer wi...
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Yeah I can get you a free one with 2 yr agreement.
Didnt want an agreement so I showed him our free phone for prepaid services (V120). That one wasn't cool enough.
I'm gonna send an email to my companys president letting him know that we need to start giving out E815s and data devices for prepaid plans.
There's exceptions, but the USA basically built out their landline network to the home much more so than the rest of the world. Thus, there's wasnt' an immediate convergence on the cell phone as our primary means of communication like there was elsewhere (I suspect this is also part of why the cell phone discount model was created).
This is changing, and maybe the industry will change with it sometime in the foreseeable future. But I don't really agree that anyone is being stupid. There just wasn't quite the demand here that sprung up overseas.
IMO, of course.
The cell phone companies started this free phone **** to increase organic growth (bodies) the intent, at first. was this to be a promotion. but then all the carriers adopted it. It is impossible then to discontinue it. If verizon stopped then they would have waves of people coming in going "Cha! You wont give me free stuff! I'm going to cingy" Sooo we are sucked into this brutal cycle of people expecting to get cheap phones.
Now, the problem with that is when a customer sees a price tag that reads "FREE!" or at the highest "129!" then they think that that is the value of the phone itself. They don't think beyond that simple number. They do not take into account...
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The reason all the latest and greatest technologies in cell phones appear across seas before they're even announced in the states is because we have the FCC.
There aren't any regulations for the manufacturers overseas and so they make a phone and ship it out while it's still going through the bureaucratic system here (it takes approximately 5 years for a phone to be officially approved for mass marketing in the states). So, while the phone is going through all the necessary approvals they put it on sale elsewhere.
The upside to this is that they discover the major bugs in the phones before they introduce it to us, so less hassle for the Americans....
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American companies prey on our societal need for stead technological growth. They know that they can continue to to upgrade phones only slightly while the rest of the world upgrades to what is available. Basically the companies here have figured out the way to make the most money but delaying tech advances in phones and making us buy every level of the tech hierarchy. Does that make sense? it's all about the benjamins? C.R.E.A.M. etc etc.