Interesting choice of phones for comparison at the end.
Saying that P990 is $700 without a contract is a pretty bad comparison. I don't know US contract pricing but in the UK you can get that phone for free with the right contract or good bargaining. You should be able to buy the iPhone out of contract because you're paying full whack for it WITH a contract. Having had a P910 and a P910i though I can't vouch for the build quality. I replaced the keypad on my P910i because it stopped working. I've since moved back to Nokias.
My current phone is the Nokia N80 and that's $545.38 unlocked (at the discounted price currently offered). I got this phone free on my contract and it does everything the iPhone does but without the touch screen interface and less drive space (2gig). I can however take spare batteries with me and I have my iPod so I can listen to music without draining my phone battery. I admit, the phone needed a firmware upgrade to get the full use of it but with that done it's been no trouble. I can even install other apps on it which is great. I have a cracking RSS reader on there which is good for keeping track on a couple of things whilst I'm out. That gmail appl from google is damn good. Hope that gets on the iPhone. Don't know how I managed my gmail on the move without it. I understand the 3G point for America but with a 50% profit margin they can afford to chuck it in there for those in areas of America that have 3G coverage. That way it would, you know, just work. Hey, further down the line we might find out it is built in and you have to pay another $5 to open up that part of your phone. Wouldn't that be something? The iPhone is being touted as a movie/music/phone device and that's great but 8gig for movies, music and everything else? Unless Apoint for America but with a 50% profit margin they can afford to chuck it in there for those in areas of America that have 3G coverage. That way it would, you know, just work. Hey, further down the line we might find out it is built in and you have to pay another $5 to open up that part of your phone. Wouldn't that be something? The iPhone is being touted as a movie/music/phone device and that's great but 8gig for movies, music and everything else? Unless Apple are planning to allow you to download a full res copy
Source GigaOM For a company that is having a tough time sticking to its new name, the mobile division of AT&T, aka Cingular Wireless, knows one thing for sure: 2007 is all about milking 3G wireless.
Not that the company has an option. All you have to do is look at their latest quarterly report. The carrier counted 2.4 million net adds for the fourth quarter and announced that it had more than tripled is profits in its earnings report today.
Still, those new customers were made up of a mix of lower end prepaid and reseller additions, along with postpaid (746K prepaid, 750K reseller, and 861K postpaid, says UBS Investment Research.)
Sure they made Sprint feel lousy, but the fact of the matter is that this kind of growth is not going to be easy going forward. Cingular is already the largest mobile phone carrier in the US – 61 million. Its nearest rival is equally deep-pocketed Verizon Wireless, with 57 million subscribers at latest count.
The two companies will be fighting to steal customers from each other or weakened rivals such as Sprint, but these are budget customers, looking to get cheaper calling options. Which means that now more than ever Cingular needs to push its 3G plan this year, building out its network and bringing in more subscribers, if it wants to keep ARPU up, and Wall Street happy.
Cingular has been actively expanding its 3G network over the past months, and in its earnings report Cingular said it had spent $2.2 billion on capital expenditures in the fourth quarter, driven by the rollout of its 3G network. The company has spent $7.04 billion on overall capital expenditures for the year.
How is the 3G network growing? Hard to tell – in the earnings report Cingular says its customers can now access its 3G network in “165 cities, including 73 of the top 100 markets.†As of December the company had said “more than 160 markets, including most of the top 100 major cities in the country.†Markets? Cities? We guess the new figure is a little more but who knows with those explanations.
Chetan Sharma, an analyst who tracks the wireless data business closely says that by the end of the year Cingular should cover 90% of the major US markets and offer between 14-to-16 3G handsets. That’s the good news.
The bad news – Verizon and Sprint are thinking along the same lines and have undertaken a massive upgrade to their already widely available EVDO networks to Rev A, as the carrier with the most subscribers starts to make some 3G headway.
Most of the operators realize that the only way to make up for the sliding voice revenues is to offer services that need a high-speed data plan. Sharma predicts Cingular will start to get more competitive with some of the data services that Verizon and Sprint have been ahead on, but will still stay behind on broadcast video (MediaFLO), LBS deployment (for 3rd party application providers), VoIP, and Push-to-talk.
The company also just started offering a $200 mail in rebate for 3G handsets for customers willing to sign-up for a 2-year 3G contract and sign up for a fixed broadband product. In other words they are giving it away – hoping that they will come. If not, well, maybe it’ll be a year of 3-Geez for Cingular.
I just heard that the iPhone announcement has practically frozen the US phone market. Lots of people are also enquiring about getting out of their current contracts!
I wouldn't want to be Nokia, Samsung, Motorola etc. for quids!
Posted: Thursday, 25 January 2007 at 9:22PM (AEDT)
If Mark wants to sink this when he gets back then obviously he's more than welcome to but in my opinion it's still actually a semi-productive discussion...You just have to read round the banter.
Comments
Saying that P990 is $700 without a contract is a pretty bad comparison.
I don't know US contract pricing but in the UK you can get that phone for free with the right contract or good bargaining. You should be able to buy the iPhone out of contract because you're paying full whack for it WITH a contract. Having had a P910 and a P910i though I can't vouch for the build quality. I replaced the keypad on my P910i because it stopped working. I've since moved back to Nokias.
My current phone is the Nokia N80 and that's $545.38 unlocked (at the discounted price currently offered). I got this phone free on my contract and it does everything the iPhone does but without the touch screen interface and less drive space (2gig). I can however take spare batteries with me and I have my iPod so I can listen to music without draining my phone battery.
I admit, the phone needed a firmware upgrade to get the full use of it but with that done it's been no trouble. I can even install other apps on it which is great. I have a cracking RSS reader on there which is good for keeping track on a couple of things whilst I'm out. That gmail appl from google is damn good. Hope that gets on the iPhone. Don't know how I managed my gmail on the move without it.
I understand the 3G point for America but with a 50% profit margin they can afford to chuck it in there for those in areas of America that have 3G coverage. That way it would, you know, just work. Hey, further down the line we might find out it is built in and you have to pay another $5 to open up that part of your phone. Wouldn't that be something?
The iPhone is being touted as a movie/music/phone device and that's great but 8gig for movies, music and everything else? Unless Apoint for America but with a 50% profit margin they can afford to chuck it in there for those in areas of America that have 3G coverage. That way it would, you know, just work. Hey, further down the line we might find out it is built in and you have to pay another $5 to open up that part of your phone. Wouldn't that be something?
The iPhone is being touted as a movie/music/phone device and that's great but 8gig for movies, music and everything else? Unless Apple are planning to allow you to download a full res copy
copyright RegisteredMedia
For a company that is having a tough time sticking to its new name, the mobile division of AT&T, aka Cingular Wireless, knows one thing for sure: 2007 is all about milking 3G wireless.
Not that the company has an option. All you have to do is look at their latest quarterly report. The carrier counted 2.4 million net adds for the fourth quarter and announced that it had more than tripled is profits in its earnings report today.
Still, those new customers were made up of a mix of lower end prepaid and reseller additions, along with postpaid (746K prepaid, 750K reseller, and 861K postpaid, says UBS Investment Research.)
Sure they made Sprint feel lousy, but the fact of the matter is that this kind of growth is not going to be easy going forward. Cingular is already the largest mobile phone carrier in the US – 61 million. Its nearest rival is equally deep-pocketed Verizon Wireless, with 57 million subscribers at latest count.
The two companies will be fighting to steal customers from each other or weakened rivals such as Sprint, but these are budget customers, looking to get cheaper calling options. Which means that now more than ever Cingular needs to push its 3G plan this year, building out its network and bringing in more subscribers, if it wants to keep ARPU up, and Wall Street happy.
Cingular has been actively expanding its 3G network over the past months, and in its earnings report Cingular said it had spent $2.2 billion on capital expenditures in the fourth quarter, driven by the rollout of its 3G network. The company has spent $7.04 billion on overall capital expenditures for the year.
How is the 3G network growing? Hard to tell – in the earnings report Cingular says its customers can now access its 3G network in “165 cities, including 73 of the top 100 markets.†As of December the company had said “more than 160 markets, including most of the top 100 major cities in the country.†Markets? Cities? We guess the new figure is a little more but who knows with those explanations.
Chetan Sharma, an analyst who tracks the wireless data business closely says that by the end of the year Cingular should cover 90% of the major US markets and offer between 14-to-16 3G handsets. That’s the good news.
The bad news – Verizon and Sprint are thinking along the same lines and have undertaken a massive upgrade to their already widely available EVDO networks to Rev A, as the carrier with the most subscribers starts to make some 3G headway.
Most of the operators realize that the only way to make up for the sliding voice revenues is to offer services that need a high-speed data plan. Sharma predicts Cingular will start to get more competitive with some of the data services that Verizon and Sprint have been ahead on, but will still stay behind on broadcast video (MediaFLO), LBS deployment (for 3rd party application providers), VoIP, and Push-to-talk.
The company also just started offering a $200 mail in rebate for 3G handsets for customers willing to sign-up for a 2-year 3G contract and sign up for a fixed broadband product. In other words they are giving it away – hoping that they will come. If not, well, maybe it’ll be a year of 3-Geez for Cingular.
Lots of people are also enquiring about getting out of their current contracts!
I wouldn't want to be Nokia, Samsung, Motorola etc. for quids!
Posted: Thursday, 25 January 2007 at 9:22PM (AEDT)
(Seriously though, where are the sinks for this discussion and the I Love Hitting Dead Horses discussion?)
Posted: Thursday, 25 January 2007 at 9:29PM (AEDT)
See that latest in the "official I hate PCs" disscussion. Very funny.