You know, I feel compelled to mention that my initial thought reading this was "Whoa, that's kinda broken, you have to donate a computer in order to get a working OS on it" ... then a few seconds later I thought "You know, I bet this computer is considerably cheaper than a copy of Vista/Win7... so for less than a cost of a mickeysoft OS he gets a decent OS" now it seems broken the other way...

Hey, I've been waiting for those for ages now, but apart from the Greenphone and the Neo1973/Freerunner, not much has happened on that front. And currently it seems things are moving more towards android as an alternative (which is both good and not good, depending on where you stand). But as 3G get more ubiquitous and LTE just around the corner, I guess it will be less and less an issue.

That's how the industry works, unfortunately. As an example, see pricing of the iPod Touch, a subsidized and an unsubsidized iPhone. These three sport nearly the same hardware/software, and yet, the price range is quite a stretch.

And, yet, people sell GSM phones that work fine on the US GSM networks, with no coordination with the carriers at all. Just with FCC certification.

So,the idea that this is caused by the carriers, seems a bit specious.

So why couldn't nokia just sell them at whatever the fair price is? Wouldn't that make their device more competitive, therefore they could sell more?

And anyone in the market for a tablet pc wouldn't they rather buy one that doubles as a phone as well? Just insert your SIM and go. idk It would be nice.

I mean the iphone is/was expensive, but if you think about it when it came out it wasnt that much more expensive than the tablet... for no contract price what was it about $500 vs $400?
maybe the difference in price was just due to it's popularity, or you can say that extra $100 went to the phone portion of the device LOL.
Ya it's not a completely accurate comparison, they're different devices, but for argument's sake I'm just shooting it out there.

Imagine the following scenario:


Carrier: Hello. We want to buy handsets for our contract clients. They get it cheaper, we get it back double on the contract.

Manufacturer: Cool ! We can make as many as you want !

Carrier: If you agree NOT to sell your phones to end users/shops in our country for at least double our subsidized price we guarantee we'll buy at least a million handsets.

Manufacturer: It's none of your business what price we're selling at !

Carrier: OK, then we'll buy our million handsets from another manufacturer.

Manufacturer: Ok, just kidding, a million handsets it is !



The carrier doesn't care about grey market/import devices, there's simply not enough of them to matter and they won't be serviced anyway. It's the direct channels of the big players they want covered. Guess why iPhones cannot be sold to foreigners ? See http://www.businessinsider.com/apple...ourists-2009-3

So it's the same scenario with the iPhone, except it gets worse - they manage to do an exclusive deal. For Apple, this means it has better terms (higher price) with the carrier, which, in turn, can charge more money (and more devilish contracts) for the oh-so-cool product.

Now, take the iPod Touch. It's not as distinct from other media players, it's not sold at only one shop and no single shop buys a milion of them. All of this means it has to go cheap(er) regardless if it's the same hardware.

EDIT:Non-contract prices for the iPhone are $600+ afaik.

If they would show us some preliminary screenshots of the OS and some of its features it would be nice. And also exactly how these internal usb slots look/work.

And, yet, Nokia manages to sell phones in the US that aren't vetted through carriers as well as selling phones that are vetted through carriers. That would seem to contradict your scenario.

I mean, I've had 5 Nokia phones. Only one of which was sold to me by a vendor (a MetroPCS CDMA phone, even; the rest were all GSM phones). Only one other had been a vendor branded phone. Two came directly from Nokia. Only one was a "grey market" phone. Yet, if what you're saying were true, because Nokia sells direct and bypasses the carriers, we shouldn't be seeing T-Mobile and AT&T Nokia phones.

Yet, we plainly and clearly do. I can get a Nokia E71-2 which has been available for 9ish months and has NO AT&T tie in (other than being AT&T 3G compatible). Or, I can get an E71x, which is about to be released through AT&T. Basically the same phone, except that one is vendor vetted and the other one has been available for a long while before vendor vetting. There's probably some subtle software variations (I'm willing to bet the E71x doesn't have a SIP client).

If what you're saying is true, why does the E71x exist? Why do other AT&T Nokia phones exist? According to your scenario, the existence of a direct-sales E71-2 should be causing AT&T to back away from Nokia phones. Yet, that's not the case.

This image was posted a few days (week?) ago:




You can plainly see in the lower right two USB devices. One is in a bright green case, on a white background (partially obscuring some labels). The other is a plain circuit board in dark green (with visible components), on a silver background (partially obscuring a bar code). In both cases, you can also see their silver USB connector, attaching them to the main board.

I'm not saying it's the ONLY scenario, nor that Nokia is necessarily employing such practices (unlike Apple, which obviously IS). I don't know the numbers of phones sold directly compared to those sold through carriers to make a more educated guess. There are a lot of other scenarios that will result in higher prices as well, this was merely one of them.