AT&T Exclusivity a thing of the past?

[independentvolume]

With Verizon's 822 outselling the AT&T 920 one would think Nokia would realize that giving AT&T any more exclusive phones would be a big mistake. Am I missing something here, or am I just using common sense like I think I am?

 

[kwambe5]

Using common sense, but that doesn't translate, usually, to big companies. They don't always do things according to common sense.

 

[Gaichuke]

With Verizon's 822 outselling the AT&T 920 one would think Nokia would realize that giving AT&T any more exclusive phones would be a big mistake. Am I missing something here, or am I just using common sense like I think I am?

I think you are missing quite a few things.

While optimal situation for Nokia might have been to offer Lumia 920 for all the major US carriers, the market conditions didn't allow that option this time and compromises had to be made. Because of that fact alone it can't be said that the AT&T exclusivity has been a big mistake. It was the best choice that could be made in a very non-optimal situation.

The situation I'm talking about is how Nokia is currently supply constrained in Lumia handset production them being unable to meet the total market demand for Lumia devices. Basically this means that Nokia is selling every Lumia device they are able to produce and they could probably sell even more if they could actually manufacture more of them. While the situation is slowly improving, Nokia is still expecting it to continue for the whole duration of 2013.

So, Nokia was in a situation where they knew that they can only produce a limited number (let's say 1M, a nice round number) of Lumia 920 units for the whole US market. After contemplating the conditions, instead of trying to offer some stock for each major carrier they decided to go with a exclusive deal with AT&T that would get all of those 1M Lumia 920s. Nokia probably felt that they would be able to sell all of those devices anyway, so they just went for the carrier that gave them the best deal for them. Given how even AT&T as the only carrier for Lumia 920 has had some serious supply problems with them, I can't even think how bad it would've been if the limited stock would have been divided between several carriers.

tl;dr Nokia would not have sold a single unit of Lumia 920 more if it would've been available for Verizon and T-Mobile too.

 

[mrmdj31675]

Actually, the Lumia 920 would have sold a lot more if Nokia had actually offered beyond one carrier, and I am including prepaid, postpaid, regional, national, native, MVNOs, GSM, and wait for it...........



CDMA (and I am talking about the CDMA world out of Verizon which Microsoft ignores because of demands for proper coding and encryption using Qualcomm standards, and Nokia ignores as well because it will have to ammend relationships after calling the technology "niche" while facing carriers like US Cellular and a hated carrier by Mobile Nations named Sprint).

 

[Gaichuke]

Actually, the Lumia 920 would have sold a lot more if Nokia had actually offered beyond one carrier, and I am including prepaid, postpaid, regional, national, native, MVNOs, GSM, and wait for it...........

They would have not. You can't sell devices that you don't have.

 

[independentvolume]

They would have not. You can't sell devices that you don't have.

The two AT&T stores in my town have plenty of stock. I'm sure they aren't the only ones.

 

[Gaichuke]

The two AT&T stores in my town have plenty of stock. I'm sure they aren't the only ones.

How is that relevant? It just means AT&T hasn't yet sold all units from the last batch Nokia shipped to them.

 

[independentvolume]

How is that relevant? It just means AT&T hasn't yet sold all units from the last batch Nokia shipped to them.

How is it relevant? The Lumia 920 is far from sold out. Seems pretty relevant to me. The stacks of Lumias sitting in most AT&T stores could of been sold by verlzon right now.

 

[Gaichuke]

How is it relevant? The Lumia 920 is far from sold out. Seems pretty relevant to me. The stacks of Lumias sitting in most AT&T stores could of been sold by verlzon right now.

That stock is already sold from Nokia's viewpoint.

There's no way to know what's the real country-wide stock situation is based on just the the two stores in your home town. But it's not impossible that Nokia production might be finally starting to catch up with the demand in the US. As I said, the situation is slowly improving and the impending launch of the Lumia 928 also speaks in favor of improved/adjusted production capacity for NA market. But the situation was not the same in November when Lumia 920 launched. The significant stock shortages in the first months after the launch would've been unbearable (and embarrassing) shortages if that limited stock would have been divided to multiple carriers.

Because of this you can't say exclusivity deal with the AT&T has been a mistake.