Hello, On Mon, 2006-12-04 at 11:59 +0100, Frantisek Dufka wrote: > Are you from US? Because most people around me (and I guess generally > in Europe) buy their phones themselves and not from mobile operator. Just jumping in on this: here in Austria I guess 80-90% of phones are sold by mobile operators including a contract (binding customers usually for 24 months). The phones are usually SIM/Network-locked and also branded by the operator, but usually way cheaper than when buying them without contract (most low end phones are given away with the contract for free), which is probably the reason why they do get sold that way at all. So this "artificial market" does exist, and the manufacturers do produce crappy phones for this market, because customers don't invest money to buy them (well, at least not directly, of course the binding contract costs money) and will not complain as much as if they had bought it for the retail price. No idea about the rest of Europe (even though in .fi I remember most people wondering about SIM-locked phones as well), so maybe it's just the usual Austrian way of being a bit behind the times. ;) Kind regards WK -- Using Unison on the Nokia 770 http://linux.spiney.org/debian_linux_maemo_nokia_770_unison_port
