Windows Phone 7 is Struggling Says Steve Balmer

[Zlejedi]

famousringo said:

Zlejedi said:

famousringo said:

The price of a smartphone pales in comparison to the price of a data contract, even in regions that don't subsidize the phone. Apple offers a cheaper iPhone, and it serves some buyers well, but most customers skip right past it and pay marginally more for the latest and greatest model. Hell, you can get a Blackberry for a little over a hundred bucks, but it isn't doing RIM much good right now. Until the cost of phone data falls a lot lower, I don't think price will be as important a competitive factor as features and ecosystem.

I'm also not sure how valuable the customers who buy cheap are. I'm not just talking about the initial handset revenue. Judging by browser usage and app sales, a lot of people are using their smartphones as kickass feature phones. A sale is a sale, but people who don't download software are people with few reasons not to switch to another brand the next time their contract comes up.

I think you have it completly wrong.

Data transfer is reasonably cheap - data plans are expensive because you have to subsidiaze $500 phones with them in two years.

We have plenty of cheap 15-20 euro/month plans with low end android phones in here.

And if i brough my own smartphone into the network i could get 500 MB for like 7 euro per month

That's 7 Euro just for data, right? You need to buy voice/ SMS/whatever else you want on top of it?

Still, that's a great deal. Here in Canada, you can't get a smartphone contract for much less than $60 for three years, and only about $13 of that is subsidizing the phone. US rates aren't much cheaper, last I saw.

So if phone plans are so much cheaper in Europe, why isn't Android doing better worldwide than it is in expensive North America? If you take Nokia's market share out of the picture, Android claims roughly the same market share as it does in the US. A little under, actually. Shouldn't cheap data, cheap phones, and Android's strong ecosystem and feature set be driving it faster in Europe?

Sources:

http://www.businessinsider.com/android-us-marketshare-2011-6

http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/news/news-anaylsis/8639-android-surges-ahead-in-europe-

Yes cheapest voice plans are in 6-7 euro range too ;) If you took only 100MB/month option to it you could stay in 10 euro total.

And note how much market share symbian has - those phones can be cheap too.