Sure the phone is the next great handset and many of the posts here have given plenty of great reasons why this phone should be $50 more. I don't disagree that it may be worth the extra price. However, the questions wasn't whether the Epic is worth $50 more than the other top end smart phones. The question is whether Sprint got the price right.
Something that many of you are overlooking - even though several people have mentioned it - is that YOU are not the typical consumer. You are part of a very small niche of consumers that actually knows the different between WiMax, WiFi, and why the iPhone 4 is not really a 4G phone. The smart phone Elite if you will.
The rest of the market - you know, the MILLIONS of people who have only recently discovered how useful it is to have a smart phone - those people don't know or care about the specs. Here is what those people hear -
1. Epic/Evo get charged a $10 fee for 4G even if you don't have it in your area.
2. {insert phone here} only costs $200 and it does the same thing
3. Sprint customer service sucks
The fact that the overall cost of ownership for the term of the contract is much lower is completely irrelevant. If that mattered to the average consumer as much as it matters to us, Cricket Wireless would be the largest carrier in the country by a huge margin and Sprint would certainly be leading AT&T and Verizon.
Sprint is fighting for market share from the #3 position. Dropping the price of the Evo to $179 and bringing out the Epic at $200 would have been a great move. They would still make a significant profit since the $10 4G fee makes up the difference easily and most people don't even have 4G. Forget that it's really an unlimited data fee, no one cares except the 2% of people that actually use more than 5 gb per month. Most use less than 2 gb so it's a moot point.
Lastly, someone pointed out that consumers usually equate price with quality. While that is true to some extent, when consumers are faced with a choice in products at varying prices, by a very large margin they tend to pick the price in the middle. It's human nature since they can justify the extra expense over the lower price unit since they didn't go with top of the line. A nice compromise. Before the Epic there was basically 2 tiers, smart phones at $200 and everything else. Now you have $250/$200/and everything else.
For the consumer that is not already on Sprint, there is no incentive to switch. You pay $50 more for the phone, you get dinged $10/month for a service you don't even have access to, and you have to put up with crappy customer service. Or you can save yourself $50 and get a Droid X, Vibrant or iPhone that does exactly the same thing. That is the reality of perception, regardless of how inaccurate that perception is. That is why Sprint dropped the ball on the price.
Something that many of you are overlooking - even though several people have mentioned it - is that YOU are not the typical consumer. You are part of a very small niche of consumers that actually knows the different between WiMax, WiFi, and why the iPhone 4 is not really a 4G phone. The smart phone Elite if you will.
The rest of the market - you know, the MILLIONS of people who have only recently discovered how useful it is to have a smart phone - those people don't know or care about the specs. Here is what those people hear -
1. Epic/Evo get charged a $10 fee for 4G even if you don't have it in your area.
2. {insert phone here} only costs $200 and it does the same thing
3. Sprint customer service sucks
The fact that the overall cost of ownership for the term of the contract is much lower is completely irrelevant. If that mattered to the average consumer as much as it matters to us, Cricket Wireless would be the largest carrier in the country by a huge margin and Sprint would certainly be leading AT&T and Verizon.
Sprint is fighting for market share from the #3 position. Dropping the price of the Evo to $179 and bringing out the Epic at $200 would have been a great move. They would still make a significant profit since the $10 4G fee makes up the difference easily and most people don't even have 4G. Forget that it's really an unlimited data fee, no one cares except the 2% of people that actually use more than 5 gb per month. Most use less than 2 gb so it's a moot point.
Lastly, someone pointed out that consumers usually equate price with quality. While that is true to some extent, when consumers are faced with a choice in products at varying prices, by a very large margin they tend to pick the price in the middle. It's human nature since they can justify the extra expense over the lower price unit since they didn't go with top of the line. A nice compromise. Before the Epic there was basically 2 tiers, smart phones at $200 and everything else. Now you have $250/$200/and everything else.
For the consumer that is not already on Sprint, there is no incentive to switch. You pay $50 more for the phone, you get dinged $10/month for a service you don't even have access to, and you have to put up with crappy customer service. Or you can save yourself $50 and get a Droid X, Vibrant or iPhone that does exactly the same thing. That is the reality of perception, regardless of how inaccurate that perception is. That is why Sprint dropped the ball on the price.
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