About 3 years ago we switched to Boost, where for $35 a month we enjoy unlimited everything. My wife’s smart phone is only $45 a month.
I’ve been to several states, both rural and urban, and never had any signal problems.
I’ll never go “contract” or “bu-the-minute” again.
Or... the market will drive the price of the phones down. People might not fork over 700 dollars upfront for a new phone, but they might pay 300.
It's just the maturation of the market, not The End for anybody.
Besides, both Apple and Samsung are ready to bring out new product lines -- phones are so 2012 anyway... :-)
I have to agree.
People like myself will keep their current cell phone until it dies or it is no longer supported by the carrier technology.
Or the beginning of the end?
Or only the end of the beginning?
Except for the battery, there are almost no new innovations with phones that are really needed. Most phones have plenty of memory and gorgeous displays. Screens don’t crack under normal usage anymore. For the most part, unless there is something revolutionary coming that I am completely unaware, the high end phones are pretty much maxed out in their potential.
Not true. The rest of the world does not use contracts. Nor do they have locked phones. You buy your minutes at a grocery or convenience store and load them up. People still buy the latest top of the line phones.
I find it not such a big deal with Sprint at least. I got a deal for it being free ($10) for the loan, and add a $10 yearly upgrade. So basically in the end I get a yearly phone instead of bi-yearly for almost the same cost. Now if I had to pay that $10 it would end up being more of course.
Oh, and I had to add the $11 warranty, cause with a loaner you’ll have to pay the full $600 or whatever if you lose or break it. Used to be you could get a refurb for $35.
So it is a bit of a worsening, but oh well.
Only in the US and Canada do people have phone contracts. Everywhere else, it’s prepaid.
The battery is the biggest scam in wireless communications today.
I know these techheads have the knowledge to create dual-core or even quad-core type batteries, like they did to processors.
Verizon didn’t drop the rates when they quit including the cost of the phone. I have about one year stuck with them before the last phone contract runs out, then I’m switching to someone cheaper, probably with GSM phones.
Possibly. The so called “smart watches” may see a new kind of applicability they never did before (or were never intended). Perhaps something like smart watches directly syncing with computers, after the ability to send and receive calls are added to the watch itself.
Most likely short term though, little impact will be felt in the smart phone market. The payment plans make it virtually like having a “two year contract” because the cost works out to be about the same, on a monthly basis, once the payment per month is factored in.
It really all depends on whether or not a company can make some kind of receiver of calls (like the smart watch above) much lower in cost than the current phone. People are now too addicted to all the features of a smart phone and also the ability to make and receive calls anywhere.
The age of the pay phone (the phone booth) is what’s dead.
Apple already created its one lease/upgrade plan, get your phone from them pay them so much a month and trade up whenever you want.
I agree the two year cycle of guaranteed big sales are over for the manufacturers but the only actually making any money has already adjusted. Not sure how it will work out but depending on their monthly fee to lease probably will about the same to lease plus service as it is now for service with phone for 2 years.
“Now, they can securitize these contracts and sell them to institutional investors...”
Subprime cell phone bubble ahead.
The US model was buy subsidized equipment and overpay for service. The rest of the world’s service was cheaper, but folks bought their own equipment. Now, US carriers want to retain their high pricing and stop the preferred equipment pricing. We’ll see how that shakes out.
The US model was buy subsidized equipment and overpay for service. The rest of the world’s service was cheaper, but folks bought their own equipment. Now, US carriers want to retain their high pricing and stop the preferred equipment pricing. We’ll see how that shakes out.
People will just add it to the payments. My sister’s cell phone bill is $350 a month for 2 phones.
All they are doing is breaking out the monthly bill so that consumers can see what they are paying for service. If they want the latest and greatest phone, they can setup a monthly payment plan to pay that separately. The two bills combined will probably not be much different than what they were already paying combined.
I have Tracfone and get good service at a very reasonable cost — about $8/month. Purchased minutes roll over.
I live in an area that does not have 4-G and I do not actually do much Internet related on the smartphone. I do have the phone connect my local home network WiFi, however.
I do not make many phone calls, so I do not have to worry much about the minutes usage.
found this out with my and gf upgrades. i think we are on installment with verizon. my new android is awesome. gald i did it and i didn’t really need to.