[Brazen9000]

I agree that the name is bad and will hurt marketing, and that the launch has been badly handled. Chen while apparently a wizard behind the scenes is a really bad pitch man. I'm a Blackberry sucker, and will probably buy the Priv but nothing I've seen so far fills me with confidence. I'm getting a really horror - Palm Pre 3 - style vibe about this...

BUT, I think the price makes sense.

(1) Take away privacy and keyboard and the phone is not going to compete with, say, the high end Samsungs, or, at the lower price point, the Nexus series, Oneplus or Moto X. Why? The Edge or Edge+ and Nexus P have more premium materials, the Samsungs have a better camera (I guarantee you) and no causal Android buyer is going to gamble on Blackberry's first kick of the Android can over companies which have significant expertise in honing Android operating systems like the highly customizable and software refined Moto X. Because of this the market for the Priv is limited to those who REALLY value privacy and the keyboard. And this is a really small market.

(2) It's a really small but also fairly wealthy market. Business people, politicians (Hillary Clinton anyone?) tend to care FAR more about privacy than the average consumer. Also younger people never cut their smart phone teeth on a keyboard phone meaning that an older business market (including corporations running Google apps) is starting to look like the small but financially potent market for this phone.

so (3) You've a very small potential market, but they're more financially capable than average. So you either don't release the phone as the market is too small or you do release a phone and charge these people a premium in order to make a profit. This price point means that Chen has basically punted on the casual Android phone buyer. He knows he's not going to compete and he's not even going to try. Sure this means that us - Blackberry fans - who would like to try it out, may be priced out of the market, but he doesn't care about that, there's a clear strategy here and he's banking on it.

I hope it works for him, I suspect though it won't. I paid full price for the Playbook on release day and watched as the price fell quickly and support over time drained away. I think I'll drop the guts of $1000 Canadian (15% sales tax in Nova Scotia) on this and have a similar experience. Sadly for Blackberry, there's too few suckers like me around!

[dvarnai]

take away the privacy... lol. prove me i do have more privacy with a blackberry first

[Brazen9000]

Sorry mods, I think I've just seen another thread like this... apologies for not looking harder before posting. Please feel free to close it.

[Scovik]

Can we please stop already with the price threads, this is getting boring and ridiculous. No one knows why the price is as is. We all have theories, some more conspiring than others, but at the end of the day that is all they are, theories.
It's simple, if you can afford it, buy it, otherwise put a zipper on the "let me tell you why Priv has this price".

Can we maybe get some useful threads on the Priv section? Most new threads are price related.....

[dvarnai]

Can we please stop already with the price threads, this is getting boring and ridiculous. No one knows why the price is as is. We all have theories, some more conspiring than others, but at the end of the day that is all they are, theories.
It's simple, if you can afford it, buy it, otherwise put a zipper on the "let me tell you why Priv has this price".

Can we maybe get some useful threads on the Priv section? Most new threads are price related.....

what kind of thread do you want? there are no videos, reviews, hands on devices yet, we can only complain about the price and the specs

[anon4226395]

Can we please stop already with the price threads, this is getting boring and ridiculous. No one knows why the price is as is. We all have theories, some more conspiring than others, but at the end of the day that is all they are, theories.
It's simple, if you can afford it, buy it, otherwise put a zipper on the "let me tell you why Priv has this price".

Can we maybe get some useful threads on the Priv section? Most new threads are price related.....

If you feel compelled to read them, you certainly don't need to comment. At least the OP expresses his studied opinion upon his perspective of the pricing. I thought he made some useful observations. It's what a forum of this type is all about surely?

[markmall]

Only justification is if Chen cannot build it cheaply enough due to the moving parts, etc.

Otherwise, it's another foolish decision like the name of the device.

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