Should New Lumia Devices be sold at a loss ?

[kpluck]

So, now that we know the pricing, $649 for the 950XL, what do you think?.

I think it is priced like an Android device, not a phone running an OS with a tiny percentage of the market. I don't think the price is unreasonable but it is too high for price to be a reason to switch to WP from Android or iOS and frankly, MS needs all the reasons it can get.

Maybe battery life will be outstanding. Maybe the camera will be class leading. As someone interested in the 950XL with a Nexus 6P on preorder, both those things will have to be true for me to cancel my preorder and I will need to see reviews saying that before my 6P ships the first week of November.

Clock is ticking.

-kpluck

 

[Ten Four]

As a Lumia fan, I hate to say it but the app gap will determine the fate of windows mobile. Hardware is exciting and attractive, but most people will still choose a phone that has their local bank app available and that will not be Windows, sadly.

 

[a5cent]

Taxes.

I live in a country with one of the lowest sales tax rates in Europe (>10% lower than in Germany), yet the products are never cheaper. Almost all the official importers (company subsidiaries) slap on a higher price tag to "compensate" for the lower taxes. It makes no difference.

It's not so much taxes, as it is companies setting the highest possible price that will just manage to not negatively impact sales volume. That's it.

 

[Feoray]

Charging over $500 for a phone that can't even get bank apps. lol what a joke. Of course they are too expensive.

 

[DracheMitch]

It doesn't cost $500 to make. The iPhone 6/6+ cost less than $250.

 

[alphaxi3]

What platform are you on? If you have no intention on switching platforms then why are you here? If your curious then your thinking about switching. Just saying.

 

[canterrain]

So the truth is... I think they have been sold at a loss in the past.
I used to work at a Microsoft Store and prior to that I worked for other retailers who specialized in cell phones (Radio Shack, Best Buy, etc.), and I can remember when the 900 came out, and when the 920 came out, 8X and so on. And these were sold at much cheaper price than iPhones. At the time when they were on par, hardware-wise, or close to it with the iPhone of their day they would be $100 or more cheaper than the iPhone. And did that help it sell? Nope.

People, average people who aren't techy people who read tech blogs for fun and watch tech announcements for fun, make choices based on some simple things. Chief among those simple things? "What my friends told me."

What did I usually hear when I tried to push Windows Phone? "I've never heard of that. Windows on a phone?" And then I could see their minds picturing Windows XP on a phone, and I knew were on the wrong foot.
When I did encounter someone who had heard of Windows Phone it was usually, "My friends say they don't have any apps. I want apps."
At the MS Store we spent hours and hours training to overcome these objections. But sometimes you can't overcome it. "Well what apps do you want, we probably have it or something like it." "YouTube." crap. "Instagram" "Well we have this other app made to work with Instagram (prior to Instagram).." "But I want Instagram." "It's basically the same." "I don't care."

And I'm shortening this, we were actually much better at presenting this than I'm showing. But that's the short end of it.

Microsoft is in a chicken/egg situation on several fronts.

They need apps, but to get apps they need developers but to get developers they need users, but to get users they need apps....
They need name recognition, and positive word of mouth, but to get that they need people but get people they need name recognition and positive word of mouth...

The average user doesn't care that it's $100 cheaper. If they've decided to get something more than the cheaper phone, they've decided they want to spend money on the phone that makes them feel best. The phone that makes them feel best is just as much determined by the externals as the internals. Microsoft has the internals. They just don't have the externals.

And I say this with deep love for Windows Phone. I've given up mine for an iPhone. And there's not a single day I don't miss the Windows OS on the phone. It's perfect. But then I decide to download Infinity Blade, jobr, Starbucks, MindBodyConnect, Sunrise Calendar, Wunderlist.. (oh I could list the Microsoft apps that are better) and all I can think to myself is that right now.. right now I've made the right decision.

 

[elindalyne]

I live in a country with one of the lowest sales tax rates in Europe (>10% lower than in Germany), yet the products are never cheaper. Almost all the official importers (company subsidiaries) slap on a higher price tag to "compensate" for the lower taxes. It makes no difference.

It's not so much taxes, as it is companies setting the highest possible price that will just manage to not negatively impact sales volume. That's it.

Tariffs on imported goods rather than personal taxes are more than likely the culprit than personal taxes...

 

[a5cent]

Tariffs on imported goods rather than personal taxes are more than likely the culprit than personal taxes...

For corporations transferring goods between EFTA countries (which includes all EU countries and a few others like Switzerland, Norway, etc) there are no import tariffs. The corporation simply pays the VAT rate for the country the goods are being imported into, and no VAT is owed in the country the goods are being exported from. No import/export tariffs at all. Switzerland has also signed free trade agreements with more countries than the EU has, including China, yet Chinese goods are almost always more expensive here than across the boarder in Germany.

In Germany the standard VAT rate is 19%
In Switzerland the standard VAT rate is 8%. Swiss income taxes are also lower than in most other developed nations.

Yet despite the low tax rates and lack of tariffs, Switzerland tops the charts of the most expensive countries to live in, with average living expenses being about 26% higher than in New York city. An often used metric which sounds rather funny (but is completely serious) is the Big Mac index, where Switzerland also figures as #1 (or last, depending on how you want to read it).

I'm not an economist, so I can't guarantee I'm not missing something, but I've read this so many times and heard it from so many companies, that I'd be very surprised if the differences were really related to some hidden import/export tariff, rather than companies just optimizing their profits, based on the average consumer's purchasing power.

Anyway, sorry for going off topic.

 

[Szajda78]

I agree with many here. I will switch back to windows phone but there is two thing that make WP survive or not!
First The apps if there is no basic app that majority (popular by) people use if not then WP will not take of.

Second is that MS need to have more aggressive approach (cost/price or bundle with other MS products) to spread the Lumia 950XL.

I personally will buy the Lumia 950XL because my needs is fulfilled. The apps I need do exist. Second the battery is removable battery and has MicroSD. Last is Lumia photo quality is outstanding.

But what Ms need to remember is to update apps/software and hardware regular and often so Lumia can be in the fight with iOS and Android.


Skickat fr?n min iPhone 6+ med Tapatalk

 

[Jakoh]

So the processor is slightly faster or equal, display is bigger more resolution, battery is bigger, camera is F/1.9 and higher resolution, the small iphone doesnt have OIS, it has more RAM and more Storage.

And you said

Not really :

 

[Tien-Lin Chang]

So the processor is slightly faster or equal, display is bigger more resolution, battery is bigger, camera is F/1.9 and higher resolution, the small iphone doesnt have OIS, it has more RAM and more Storage.

And you said

A9 is way faster in single-thread task and we all know that the A57 core in S810 shut-down almost all the time so it's even slower than S800 sometimes in real life dur to the overheat problem. The heat pipe already been applied to sony Z3+ and Z5 yet to solve the heat problem. So they are only on par at multi-thread task on those "white listed" benchmark software.

Display is good. However battery capacity is not = usage time and I'm not gonna aruge that till the real test result is out.

Camera....the 1/2.4" 20mp sensor is almost for sure coming from toshiba and I don't think they got the newest one (T4KA7-121) with PDAF so the old one is the same one on HTC M9....the leak video shows the AF speed is clearly behind PDAF cameras and we don't know how much MSFT can get rid of the traditional NOKIA ramdon white balance shift. They don't even show any photo form the camera during the event and it's quite abnormal across all the mobile phone release press when they really want to address on camera - kind of wired isn't it?

RAM, sure it's larger

Storage - that's funny, you gonna compare a business grade NVMe NAND to expend SD card? It's not even a compare in terms of speed and data safeness.

so yes

NOT REALLY

 

[zkyevolved]

What platform are you on? If you have no intention on switching platforms then why are you here? If your curious then your thinking about switching. Just saying.

I love all platforms; except iOS. I love Windows Phone, I love Android... Oh... I guess those are the only two I like xD haha. I am kind of bored of Android. My LG G4 works SO well and just does EVERYTHING I want; but I've been on Android for SO long that it bores me!

So I switched to the 930 which literally made my palms sweat because it got so warm, and battery life was SOOOOOOOO terrible. I even got it TWICE - once at release and once like 9 or 10 months later just to see if it had been fixed; and no.
Then I got the 1520 because i loved the OS but it had a major flaw in multitasking; it took forever to reload my main messaging app: Line. Yes, I imagine that's the fault of LINE since Whatsapp doesn't have that issue, so I wrote them multiple times, and I guess Windows Phone isn't a very popular OS for them and I should feel happy they even support the OS. It also had the phantom taps which was rather annoying.

So that was it, no other Windows Phone devices for me to try out! Now with Windows 10 Mobile I hope they have done some internal magic to multitasking and now with the XL its a large flagship device that I'm excited about . So, I'll give it a go! But for that price no. But then again, just because they're releasing it here in Europe (Spain) for 750 euros doesn't mean that'll be the actual price in 2 months! haha. My G4 was priced at 600 dollars, I got it for 150 less on Amazon a few months after launch. Hopefully, Microsoft's devices will take a huge hit (which they will due to sales), and then it'll be cheaper and more people would consider it...

Shouldn't they have just dropped the price from the beginning and marketed it for sales? They need a huge fan base now... They need to get as many devices as they can out there so it becomes more popular so that more people will have it so then more developers will try to cash in on them...

Well, that's just my opinion at least...

 

[pjm1891]

Swedish prices are in 5999 sek for 950. ($728, €646 ?475) The XL is 6999 sek ($849 €754 ?554) I'm not sure how much they will sell here, since we don't have cortana and bing is useless.

 

[spazinvader]

A9 is way faster in single threaded task. But will come down a notch with multi tasking. And for the heat issues, they have a hybrid cooling system which is really different from the heat pipe system used in Sony's offerings. So not underclocked and running full capacity of the processor. This will be comparable with A9. Lets wait for the real world usage(I am not a fan of benchmark tests).

More battery generally means more time for a casual user. And for a mid to high user, it is definitely a boon.

Regarding storage, it is also funny that you forget it is an optional storage that can extend your media library in the phone(local storage) and definitely way faster with Class 10 devices for reading music or videos than streaming.

Camera??? I half expected they will not show much and my expectations come true unfortunately. The hardware is there but in my opinion, the software is yet to reach the potential.

My only worries is about the software. The OS itself. Hopefully, within december it will mature enough and be par(in terms of quality) with Windows Phone 8.1.

A9 is way faster in single-thread task and we all know that the A57 core in S810 shut-down almost all the time so it's even slower than S800 sometimes in real life dur to the overheat problem. The heat pipe already been applied to sony Z3+ and Z5 yet to solve the heat problem. So they are only on par at multi-thread task on those "white listed" benchmark software.

Display is good. However battery capacity is not = usage time and I'm not gonna aruge that till the real test result is out.

Camera....the 1/2.4" 20mp sensor is almost for sure coming from toshiba and I don't think they got the newest one (T4KA7-121) with PDAF so the old one is the same one on HTC M9....the leak video shows the AF speed is clearly behind PDAF cameras and we don't know how much MSFT can get rid of the traditional NOKIA ramdon white balance shift. They don't even show any photo form the camera during the event and it's quite abnormal across all the mobile phone release press when they really want to address on camera - kind of wired isn't it?

RAM, sure it's larger

Storage - that's funny, you gonna compare a business grade NVMe NAND to expend SD card? It's not even a compare in terms of speed and data safeness.

so yes

NOT REALLY

 

[visu9211]

And that is the issue... You get good Sales prices and all the services in US only... In Europe, 640 is still ?180-?200 ...

 

[Nicolas Ramz]

In France you can get the Lumia 640 for as low as 147?.

 

[calbro]

Folks don't need Microsoft to make it's products at a loss because they need to be the market leader for Windows 10 setting the bar for the rest of the market, then again who want to be in business to sell at a loss which defeats the purpose.:straight:

Microsoft need to get valued hardware so developers can cross-platform their work to wp and put them in shoppers reach on the store shelves. The OEM partners will fill the remaining gaps.:winktongue:

 

[fdruid]

This discussion makes no sense whatsoever. I know talking is free and that it might be fun for some people to play pretend, but I don't think that anyone here is in position of thinking about business strategies for the multi-billion dollar Microsoft company. So yeah, it's pretty much about speculating and just saying things. Selling Lumias at a loss is a ricidulous proposition, there's not much else to say about it really.

 

[Aquila]

This discussion makes no sense whatsoever. I know talking is free and that it might be fun for some people to play pretend, but I don't think that anyone here is in position of thinking about business strategies for the multi-billion dollar Microsoft company. So yeah, it's pretty much about speculating and just saying things. Selling Lumias at a loss is a ricidulous proposition, there's not much else to say about it really.

What makes it ridiculous? It is a strategy with precedent. There's likely more than one road for MS to take to dig themselves out of their hole they've made.

Nexus 6 Assassin Edition. Android Central Moderator, Gonfaloniere