Originally Posted by
Troy Tiscareno Every feature costs money - plus lots of features are actually purchased from other vendors and those vendors may have a limited number of the part available, and will prioritize their largest customers first. A device maker has to weigh costs (adding $1 in parts costs means $5-10 in retail price increase), the availability of those parts, whether they can fit the parts into their design, etc.
TCL isn't trying to make a flagship phone with flagship features, because they can't be price-competitive - a flagship-level K2 with Galaxy S-type specs would probably cost $1500 retail because TCL is in a very different position than Samsung - so some features have to be cut in order to reach a pricepoint that will assure a minimum level of sales. Keep in mind that we're still talking around 1M devices per year, which is nothing compared to the rest of the market.
There's a whole list of features that different people want, and they'd all add cost, complexity, require internal space, licensing issues, or something. That's why they aren't in there already.
I wonder how TCL operates.... I know in the past BlackBerry had to make guesstimates on parts orders and obligates themselves to purchasing those components. Production was usually done in big batches and then stored, they were then boxed as needed and put into distribution channels.
With the KEY2, it doesn't share much with other TCL Communications products, so it's not like they can offset some of the components or just have bulk orders. I think all the new Alcatel phones are using Mediatek chips, so with as little as TCL is doing with Qualcom that can't be getting very good pricing. Might be purchasing via 3rd parties distributor in order to have an available flow of components in the quantities they need? Plus it sure seems like they do very small production batches from time to time as needed. Which seems different from what I've heard about most electronics production.
I think the way they are operating is expensive, but it's the only way to minimize their risk with such a small market. So probable not as much profit going back to TCL as some think the $650 price would suggest.