On Mon Dec 4 10:59:27 2006, 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. Operators offer phones too, yes, but they are > generally overpriced, outdated and the choice is limited. Not in the UK, at least. In the UK, the majority of phones - especially higher end ones - are bought with a pay-monthly contract. This either lowers the price or renders the phone "free", but in return, also "locks" the phone to a specific operator. I'm pretty sure this is a common pattern thoughout much of Europe - our operators include T-Mobile (so I assume the same applies in Germany), and Orange, which is French owned. Even prepay phones are heavily subsidized by the operators, although by no means as much, and the phone selection is much more limited anyway. This leads me to suspect that actually the operators could provide subsidized 770s, since a 770 owner is more likely to use increased mobile data, which in turn the operators can recoup the costs from. But they don't, perhaps because it's a whole new area to them that they'd much rather stay out of, perhaps because they perceive it as too much of a niche market, and perhaps because unlike the phones, which they can essentially customize to their services, they'd never have the same degree of control over the 770. Whatever the reasons, though, this does eliminate a large selling tool that Nokia's phones have, which was Jonathan's point. Dave. -- Dave Cridland - mailto:dave at cridland.net - xmpp:dwd at jabber.org - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/ - http://dave.cridland.net/ Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade
