It Costs $450 In Marketing To Make Someone Buy a $49 Nokia Lumia 363
benfrog writes "According to market-share estimations compared to marketing dollars, it costs nearly ten times as much to sell the Windows Phone-based Nokia Lumia as it does to buy one. Other analysts agree with the low sales numbers."
Re:Subsidized price (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the stupidity actually is real, painful, intense and relentless. It's boundless, infinite and beyond the realm of understanding. It burns.
iphone "killers": Samsung/Sprint Instinct, $100mil (Score:4, Interesting)
The low $199 price of the iphone really caught most carriers off guard -- the standard pricing for smartphones in those days was around $350 *with* contract. So the Instinct's original pricing of $179 had to be lowered to $129. Sprint HEAVILY marketed this thing, with many ads showing the "advantages" of the Instinct over the iphone. Hesse, CEO of Sprint, spent $100mil on marketing the Instinct.
However the Instinct (or In-stink as its customers would come to call it), was really a terrible product -- terrible web browser, lame features, AND worse, required Sprint's brand new, and very pricey (for Sprint), data plans.
Sprint refuses to release real sales numbers, but estimates by analysts were in the 350K range -- perhaps after a year it might have hit 500K. So that is at best $200 of MARKETING COSTS for each Instinct sold.
Hesse would never again stink that much into marketing a phone. Indeed some blame that burn episode for Sprint's rather poor marketing of the Palm Pre, a much better device that never was really given a proper chance...
Microsoft killed Nokia (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I know I'm just stupid open source open source hardware jerk but when asked, which is quite often, which phone to buy I always say avoid anything related to Microsoft. Now admittedly my personal anomosity goes way back to Gate's letter against hobbyists using his software without ponying up pennies to him. Still today though my advice to everyone is to not buy anything that requires you to pay monies past the original transaction.
Re:Subsidized price (Score:5, Interesting)
What's *really* weird is that the iPhone has some of those same limitations and yet it is wildly successful ...
I wonder what the key differences are ?
(I already have an idea, just curious what the /. crowd thinks...)
Re:Too Soon (Score:5, Interesting)
Nokia was a giant in the cell industry but has been slipping lately.
Slipping? That's an understatement. Go check out the 1 year graph [google.com]. You can't even see today's price because it's lost under the markers at the bottom.
Re:Subsidized price (Score:4, Interesting)
in europe we make it a sport not to buy any product that advertises too much, like nokia did in europe :D
it doesn't work on us anymore.
Then what's with all the Heineken-only bars everywhere? I had to go kinda far out of the way to get a good beer when I was there (this was in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands)
Re:Subsidized price (Score:4, Interesting)
Win 8 Phone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Subsidized price (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess you really haven't gotten the point then.
The Heineken logo (not sure what the point of the thing is) can be found on just about any bar. But 99% of them (at least in the Netherlands) will serve you a plethora of different beers. I personally haven't seen a bar/cafe where they sold Heineken only.
The only thing the Heineken logo tells me is that there is _a_ bar at that location. I'm sure not drinking that stuff..
It's worse (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unfortunately, Nokia has no Steve Jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Dumb phones are still going, but how long they will last is anyone's guess.
Well, basically, I think they will last for a very long time.
At least until a smart phone becomes cheaper than a dumb phone - which imho is possible considering a smart phone doesn't have all those mechanical buttons a dumb phone has. And a dozen or so buttons may very well be more expensive to produce than a single touch screen display.
And even then there will likely always remain a market for simple phones that do one thing, and one thing very well: making phone calls.
Re:Unfortunately, Nokia has no Steve Jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
The marketing department of Apple, Inc. did not need to "sell" their wares as much as their peers in other companies (like Nokia or RIM, for example), as Mr. Jobs himself had done most of the selling.
Ah, that must be why Apple posters seem to be everywhere, if you turned on a TV any time in the last five years you had a good chance of seeing at least one Apple advert, and every major film in the last decade or so has had gratuitous Apple product placement.
Re:Unfortunately, Nokia has no Steve Jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
I want a phone that can stay in my car, turned off, and work after three months, for emergencies.
Claimed to last, turned off, for 15 years. [spareone.com] It's on my list of gadgets to get.