Physicists don't write dictionaries.
Thankfully.
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Funny in a tragic sort of way is the pointless debates we can get ourselves into here.
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Apple Reportedly Cutting iPhone 5c Production as Chinese Gray Market Prices Drop
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Physicists don't write dictionaries.
Thankfully.
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Funny in a tragic sort of way is the pointless debates we can get ourselves into here.
He's not wrong. He's simply commenting on the consumer's cost of the device, not the service.
He IS wrong, so are you. Your AT&T / Verizon / Sprint monthly payment DOES include some prorated phone payments. The companies just hid the details from you and tried to let you believe they are all service fees, hoping to extract more profit out of you.
Funny enough, a physicist - MIT grad - who was doing some side work actually painted one of the rooms in my house black. Asked him what I owed him for supplies and he said nothing, since he didn't add any color ... only subtracted it.
This is what I don't get... In a world where the 4S still performs a lot basically all of what most smartphone users need, using "last year's model" as an insult does't really make sense. The iPhone 5c matches up technically with basically all smartphones currently on the market. Two years from now, it may underperform, but right now, it doesn't. The phone, from an internals perspective, basically flagship level.
Is that true? Better go tell Microsoft and Samsung, because they don't seems to get that!
Until postpaid plans are available that offer a lower rate for consumers bringing unsubsidized phones to a carrier, this point is (and always has been) moot. To the vast majority of users in the US, phones are $99-$299, and servcie plans are $90-100 for a single user and some discount for family users.
Again, if I sign up for new service with an unlocked iPhone I pay the same price for service on Verizon that I would if I had received a subsidy from Verizon.
If you buy the unsubsidized phone, you can get the same service (the same AT&T network and the same talk minutes, the same pieces of messages, the same data usage) from StraightTalk or Net10 for a much much lower monthly fee.
Because they see a spike in sales at launch?
Those "facts" are what we refer to as "opinions".
Let the free market speak for itself...as evidence of this global "opinion," and consider it fact.
That's because most regular US customers are SO poor at very simple math. There are many choices with much cheaper monthly service fee if they buy the phone upfront in full price, however they just think $199 is A LOT cheaper than $650, while $45 isn't that much a difference from $90.
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You can always choose other service carriers that charge a lot less for monthly fee but don't subsidize for your phone.
...but do you think even a single person in those ads actually paid for the phone?
Of course they overestimated demand. Lets stop beating around the bush MR, you've stated the reason yourself. The newfangled gizmo fast gold-bling model is only $100 more and comes in sensible colours.
I understand that many folks would prefer to pay the additional $100-$150 for the 5s. But, there are a lot of parents with teenagers in their homes that will go for the 5c. I have 3 teenagers, and purchasing the 5c will save me as much as $450 compared to buying 5s for the bunch. My wife does not give a darn about a 64 bit processor and would prefer the colors and rounded edges of the 5c.....so add her to the crowd and now as much as $600 saved. I personally would be inclined toward the 5s primarily because of the improved camera ( I take most of the family pics with my iphone). On the other hand, I might prefer the 32gb 5c to the 16gb 5s, since the increased storage capacity might be more valuable to me than the upgraded camera and other internals.
The point is; oftentimes, it just doesn't make sense to upgrade to the latest technology for every member of the family, since their needs are pretty simple. Let's face it, most people only use a small fraction of their phone's capabilities.
Of course, everyone in the family is not going to be eligible to upgrade at once, but as a practice, I can see parents adopting the 5c as the standard for their kids and themselves.
The point is; oftentimes, it just doesn't make sense to upgrade to the latest technology for every member of the family, since their needs are pretty simple. Let's face it, most people only use a small fraction of their phone's capabilities.
Of course, everyone in the family is not going to be eligible to upgrade at once, but as a practice, I can see parents adopting the 5c as the standard for their kids and themselves.
The 5C is an overpriced cheap and plastic phone, and it has been a failure, as evidenced in the price drops (on US contract) to $0 on Tmo. The 5C is not taken seriously in HK...these are facts supported by numbers, and I'd call them opinions only if they were debatable, but they're not; the 5C is not the real deal.
You actually don't pay back one penny of the subsidy in your monthly payment. Case in point, my parents are on my family plan and they were eligible for an upgrade. They have flip phones and are happy with them. I wasn't eligible for an upgrade, so used their upgrade to get me a new iPhone 5S. So, I got a fully subsidized iPhone for a line I pay $9.99/month for.
Didn't see this add before... The colors do indeed look dumb in the hands of grown adults ;-)
No doubt, I agree with you. It was a brilliant move by Apple to gain control over the used iPhone market.
But, there's a problem. Nobody's buying them. Activations have been dwarfed by a near mythical iPhone (the 5S), everyone has slashed their prices, now they're cutting production on a phone that was introduced less than a month ago! Are you hearing this for the 5S? Go to Apple.com or walk by an Apple store; marketing for the 5c is all you see.
Nobody? Usage statistics have the 5S:5C at about 2:1. What makes you think that is bad?
That makes me think of: On ne saurait faire boire un âne qui n'a pas soif (You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink)...
Sorry, nothing personal ;-)
Or maybe us non-US mobile phone users are all wrong and US carriers ARE actually charities that give smartphones away for free
No I did not.
It was Apple's iOS auto-correct function kicking in and changing my inputs wrongly.
Why are you guys so afraid of color?
It would help if Apple did color right by matching the back to the front instead of their half baked design.
I think he meant 50%
Going from $200 to $100 is 50% savings (you are paying 50% or half of $200)
Going from $100 to $200 is 100% increase (you are adding 100% or a whole $100 to the first $100)
Although I do not know if "savings" is the right word since you are buying a new phone a 2 year contract in either case...
<EDIT>I missed the part where he missed the prices in question, even when he quoted the $100/$200 comparison:
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