[Xano]

Everyone knows BB10 devices are to much overpriced.
They are cutting 60% on the Z10, even that way is hard to sell.

[axeman1000]

Remember Intel celeron? Paying for Intel name but quality sucked!!!!!!!

Welcome to the same thing in cellular components!!!!!!

Posted via CB10

[RedFoxOne]

You seem unable or unwilling to understand the concept of added value - for its target audience, the mac sells - it's not intended for people who want to spend only $400 on a cheap PC or laptop - in the same way, the iphone would only be overpriced if it didn't sale to the audience it was aimed by - but it does sell, so in a market sense it cannot be overpriced.

The Z10 sells now in the same way the Touchpad sold - to bottom feeders not the intended premium audience.

Nope. You're the one unable to understand. For PC to get to the capability of a Mac, it probably only costs half (or a little bit more than half) the price, and therefore Mac is overpriced in that sense. Don't you just get that there are people willing to buy a product, knowing it's overpriced? Apple can slap whatever price and people will buy it. But whatever, you won't get it.

[Irish Blues]

Most devices are overpriced, especially if they're popular. The 32GB iPhone 5S is currently listed at $749 at Verizon (but "only" $299 if you'll hook up for a 2-year contract). The 16GB 5S is a "bargain" at $649 ($199 with contract), the 5C is $549 ($99 with contract). Meanwhile, the Z10 and Q10 are $299 and $399 respectively - but take a 2-year contract, and both devices are free.

Apple free on a 2-year contract? Samsung free on a 2-year contract? Only if you're getting the S3 Mini or the S4 Mini (or you step way down to the Gusto 2 and are willing to shell out $0.99 for it).

[early2bed]

If you want Blackberry to be priced like Oppo, the first thing you have to do is to get rid of BB10 and adopt Android. There's no margin to develop your own OS. Yes develop - you can't expect to ever be done with developing an OS when Android, iOS, and Windows Phone are racing to add features.

Second, forget about all the marketing - no consumer ads, no enterprise sales team, no Formula One sponsorship, etc. Forget selling via carriers and retailers and go with completely online sales. Sell all the patents - you don't need them.

Fire all the smartphone-oriented Canadian employees, Indian employees, etc. Everything should be based in China.

Finally, spin off QNX and the enterprise software & services operation and give it the Blackberry brand. There's no synergy with a generic Chinese hardware manufacturer selling $300 Android smartphones online.

[trwallace]

Nice rant. I kind of agree with you in some ways. Obviously prices decrease over time just look at the difference in price over some earlier handsets. Its a natural course of tech. it gets easier to make products with the increase in production. that brings down the price. So the phones will always get cheaper over time. The suppliers try to keep the pricing up by offering more features but at some point that catches up too. I bought a z10 in the first weeks of release as well. I think i paid 599 or something close. Its obviously not worth that now nor should it be. Blackberry had a higher price point. First off they are not going after the low end people. They wanted the mid to high end tier sales. Secondly they are looking at how the phone works as a unit. Sorry nothing against the Oppo but android is garbage. I have it on my tablet and frankly its such a let down as far as ease of use and productivity goes after using my z10 with the latest software update. What some people just dont get is you will never be the top of the heap for specs. just ask apple,samsung, htc, sony, and the list goes on. look at HTC this is a prime example they have a great phone with a few advantages over the apple and samsung its a feature packed phone. Sure they will sell some phones. Will they beat out apple and samsung. That would be a resounding no. The reason being they cant beat those guys in marketing. They can try their hardest and they still wont end up on top. Blackberry finally realized this. They are coming out with decent phones that have better software for producttivity. No they wont be the lastest greatest gaming platform but thats not what these phones are for. They are for business prmarliy and recreation secondary. So pricing wise dont expect the lowest price either. they dont want to get into that race either. The lowest guy doesnt win. Nokia has a phone under 100 dollars do they want to compete with that? unlikely as well and looks like new unbuntu phones down as low as 25 dollars. Thats not a place blackberry wants to go. I think they wnat ooffer the best software and hardware that work well together for enterprise. Thats it. Bottom line. I keep seeing these posts bring out the latest chipsets with gazillion gigs of storage and huge batteries that last for weeks. Then sit on them as they rot in some warehouse because they wont take back the lead in smartphones. Thats not going to happen. They need revenue. That comes from BES, BBM, QNX and maybe a small portion in handsets if they are lucky. I understand you like blackberry so the best thing we can do for them is start promoting the software. Its awesome. give someone your handset let them play with it. If there is a way to cover up the blackberry name so they dont know what it is even better. Plus send suggestions for software additions and fixes. Thats where the future is. I always love when the new updates come for the phone because its like getting a new phone without actually buying one. i think you have some good points in the post just think the direction here is not something blackberry will be doing any time soon.

[anon(1464249)]

Okay, again: your $154 Z10 and $199 iPhone are just BOMs = Bill of Material. BOM hasn't anything to do with actual costs of a manufactured product and especially nothing with a product on a shelf you can actually buy. Even those $8 for manufacturing an iPhone are, simply put, bogus.

I know it's just BOM. I did clarify that in the post.

If you want Blackberry to be priced like Oppo, the first thing you have to do is to get rid of BB10 and adopt Android. There's no margin to develop your own OS. Yes develop - you can't expect to ever be done with developing an OS when Android, iOS, and Windows Phone are racing to add features.
Second, forget about all the marketing - no consumer ads, no enterprise sales team, no Formula One sponsorship, etc. Forget selling via carriers and retailers and go with completely online sales. Sell all the patents - you don't need them.
Fire all the smartphone-oriented Canadian employees, Indian employees, etc. Everything should be based in China.

Finally, spin off QNX and the enterprise software & services operation and give it the Blackberry brand. There's no synergy with a generic Chinese hardware manufacturer selling $300 Android smartphones online.

That's a little harsh don't you think.
There is a margin to develop an OS, I don't think everyone ever said a word in the BlackBerry marketing departement, They just nixed T-mobile and opened up an online shop, their patents are extremely valuable.
Synergy? BlackBerry has no synergy, they only develop one piece of hardware, that piece being the BlackBerry smartphone.

Looks like they're well on their way.

[chalx]

:@CGK - Apple devices are indeed overpriced. You can't just look at people that do have Iphone, there is a vast number of us that do not have Iphone just because of price
I was eyeing Z10 from launch day, but I bought it when street price dropped to 210 eur. When I bought my Z10, street price for more than year old Iphone 4s was 270 eur.

[co4nd]

First The Z10 is cheap now because they've already written them off as a loss, really they can sell them for anything, just a matter of how much they can recuperate .

Blackberry and Apple need to make money off the devices they sell.

[co4nd]

:@CGK - Apple devices are indeed overpriced. You can't just look at people that do have Iphone, there is a vast number of us that do not have Iphone just because of price
I was eyeing Z10 from launch day, but I bought it when street price dropped to 210 eur. When I bought my Z10, street price for more than year old Iphone 4s was 270 eur.

Some are some aren't, Not sure how many more iPhone 5S's they can make, seem to be priced just right since they keep selling them. The iPhone 5c is probably overpriced since they've had to halt production

[chalx]

Right, and that is why I'm not pissed at Chen because he isn't releasing high end phone this year. It wouldn't sell at all at premium price. Blackberry fell from premium lineup and I'm glad that finally Blackberry got that.

Sent from my Lumia 925 Tapatalk

[SunshineStateFlyer]

I think you're absolutely right about the fact that BlackBerry was very overpriced at the launch of the new BB10 devices. They cannot simply come up out of nowhere with a bad reputation and an 800$ phone. There are few people who would buy such a thing.

I hope this will change with John Chen's strategy. A Z3 as a low price model for the masses and people will get curious. It does matter a lot for a phone like the Z3. It doesn't matter that much for a phone like the Q20 because if you want a keyboard you're basically willing to pay. Either you're a BlackBerry enthusiast, business user with a need for it, or you just want a modern phone with a keyboard.

Posted via CB10

[Lendo]

That's a pretty sweet looking phone. I'd use it.

[anon(5828343)]

That is the problem with Chen's "all over the map" strategy (first saying that hardware wasn't where it was at then saying that, oh, in fact, BBRY will always be in hardware and, lo' and behold, I forced my marketing team into branding a new device the "Classic" [puke]...as if BBRY's marketing geniuses would even have any idea worth running with...) While Chen and his team continue to dilly dally with their silly ideas, companies like Oppo and Xiaomi, not to mention the older, established guys like Samsung and Apple, continue to out innovate BBRY both in terms of hardware AND software.

We can sit here and debate whether BB10 is the biggest, bestest and badest OS available but the fact of the matter is, other manufacturers are coming out with hardware that has better specs than anything BBRY has come up with.

[aha]

BlackBerry has always avoided specs war, and their products have always been viewed as behind their competitions.

Are these two things connected somehow? I wonder.... lol

Can they remain attractive to enterprises while being viewed as dinosaur fossils?

Professional grade technology that is one year behind in hardware specs.


Posted via CB10 with Z30 on 10.2.1.2141

[Andrew4life]

It's simple. Everyone that releases an Android phone simply has to put together hardware. Software is made by Google and they are the ones that build it and offer it free for everyone. But how is Google making money? Well, advertising of course. Every time you use an Android phone Google is tracking and using your every move for their benefit. This could be as simple as getting to know what you are searching on Google, to where you are going. This information provides analytics so they can better push ads to you.
For example. All the ads that show up when you browser websites are targetted. Notice that if you search for a particular topic. E.g. BlackBerry. You might see an ad for BlackBerry devices on a website like Wall Street Journal later on.
Google also recently started injecting ads into your gmail if you go through the Gmail Website.

Google Android + OEM Manufacturer is a really interesting relationship that is pretty much not seen anywhere else in any other sector of this scale. There is usually a service that is provided that someone pays for. But for Google, someone else is paying for you.

Advertisers/ Corporations < ----- Money>>> --------> Google <-------<<<Data------> Consumers
Apple <-------<<<Money---------> Consumers
BlackBerry <-------<<<Money---------> Consumers
Microsoft (Windows) <--------<<<Money---------> Asus/Dell/Other OEMs <----<<<Money-----> Consumers

[Thud Hardsmack]

The market has a good way of telling us if something is overpriced - it doesn't sell - Apple devices are very clearly not overpriced.

I think we can all agree that iPhones are indeed overpriced. The iPhone has a loyal following because of which the normal market parameters do not apply. The OS cost can't possibly be accounted for the difference in price. If they can manage to sell the Z10 at half of it's original price at the moment they could have set this price point in the beginning.

Loyal following is just an articulation of added value so in a market sense it is perfectly normal - so no we can't agree that normal rules don't apply unless you want to get into the special pleading we see around here.


sent from my bright red Nexus 5

Apple products are overpriced even if a lot of people are buying them. You know, it's like for everything else: it happened to me to buy a t-shirt ~40$ and even if I did know it was overpriced I bought it because I wanted it. All big names are and will always overpricing their products because people actually buy them! BlackBerry isn't selling as well as expected and so they are now trying to reduce the prices.. Anyway I still believe that with a good marketing campaign BlackBerry could have sell 10 times more even asking 800 dollars for a Z10 or a Q10.

Posted via CB10

One thing in addition, and this is a personal observation, there are those people buying iPhones without being much educated in the intricacies of it and other smartphones having a mindset that the iPhone is priced "normally", which to them means the smarthphones being advertised at lower cost are "cheaper" in addition to being less expensive. And possibly BlackBerry had the same thought as well, perhaps pricing the BB10 devices as such in order to keep above the "cheap device" threshold.

Andrew's explanation covers another aspect.

It's simple. Everyone that releases an Android phone simply has to put together hardware. Software is made by Google and they are the ones that build it and offer it free for everyone. But how is Google making money? Well, advertising of course. Every time you use an Android phone Google is tracking and using your every move for their benefit. This could be as simple as getting to know what you are searching on Google, to where you are going. This information provides analytics so they can better push ads to you.
For example. All the ads that show up when you browser websites are targetted. Notice that if you search for a particular topic. E.g. BlackBerry. You might see an ad for BlackBerry devices on a website like Wall Street Journal later on.
Google also recently started injecting ads into your gmail if you go through the Gmail Website.

Google Android + OEM Manufacturer is a really interesting relationship that is pretty much not seen anywhere else in any other sector of this scale. There is usually a service that is provided that someone pays for. But for Google, someone else is paying for you.

Advertisers/ Corporations < ----- Money>>> --------> Google <-------<<<Data------> Consumers
Apple <-------<<<Money---------> Consumers
BlackBerry <-------<<<Money---------> Consumers
Microsoft (Windows) <--------<<<Money---------> Asus/Dell/Other OEMs <----<<<Money-----> Consumers

Nope. You're the one unable to understand. For PC to get to the capability of a Mac, it probably only costs half (or a little bit more than half) the price, and therefore Mac is overpriced in that sense. Don't you just get that there are people willing to buy a product, knowing it's overpriced? Apple can slap whatever price and people will buy it. But whatever, you won't get it.

:@CGK - Apple devices are indeed overpriced. You can't just look at people that do have Iphone, there is a vast number of us that do not have Iphone just because of price
I was eyeing Z10 from launch day, but I bought it when street price dropped to 210 eur. When I bought my Z10, street price for more than year old Iphone 4s was 270 eur.

Apple products are custom designed/built to run Apple software. Once you've purchased the hardware though, software upgrades are less than a tank of gas (in the US). If you wish to run that software on something that's not built by Apple, you'll need to make sure the hardware matches very closely to what they actually use, also known as a "Hackintosh".

[BK_NY_RAY]

Answer is in dated business strategy. Before, BlackBerry could sell phones expensive cause they had something different to offer bis,bes,bbm,handy os etc. Today competition is on same level ( if not better), plus they don't have to invest in developing of the os(for instance oppo) cause Google is doing that.
So BlackBerry was is in difficult position cause they needed to generate revenue somehow keeping in mind BlackBerry World is poor comparing to competition and currently they don't have adds in os to monetise, so the only way they had is to pump the prices up.

Posted via CB10

It's not like BB can't have someone else make a BB10 phone. BB makes the OS and someone else makes the hardware.

Still don't see why BB won't just make sure small profit just to get BB10 phones on everyone's hands so more development comes, which means more money and sales. Plus, BB can make money on services or charge $1 for BBM after a year or something on competing OS' or something, like Whatsapp does.

It seems to me that the people in charge secretly are trying to make BB die because no prestigious company like BB can make such dumb decisions and be this dumb.

[Thud Hardsmack]

Had to throw this in, the Oppo Finder from back when. I wouldn't dare try this with my Z10.

Oppo Finder screeen hammer nail test.

[BK_NY_RAY]

Another great example of dumb decisions, IMO, if every Phone from now on isn't 16:9,rectangle screen, then that is STUPID!

[castano22]

OPPO has always been like that even when they first released a 1080p device before everyone else. If it wasn't for OPPO running Android I would have gotten it instead of a BlackBerry 10 phone. If they ever decide to release na Ubuntu Touch phone I'll leave BlackBerry 10

Posted via CB10

[Mr.Willie]

Then why even post a comment?



I know, I'm oversimplifying things. According to CrackBerry (Here's what the BlackBerry Z10 costs to make | CrackBerry.com) the Z10 costs $154 to put together. Add to that the R&D, Software, various licenses and a profit margin and you hit the price of $800 retail (unsubsidized). Seriously? While I agree there is a higher costs than the average Android device because of the OS being made in-house and in-house manufacturing it's still way off the mark. Belgium carriers and i'm sure other carriers around the world don't practice the subsidizing technique so we get to pay full retail value if we want it. Pricing at $800 while there are other phones out there that do the same or more is just plain stupid, maybe this worked in the days the name BlackBerry still had meaning but people are getting more conscious about their spendings and choosing a $500 phone or a $800 phone with the same abilities is a no-brainer for most.

They got greedy possibly hoped on customers practicing brand loyalty but it's all about the mighty buck these days than it is about being loyal to a brand. Unfortunaltey in the process they alienated a bunch of their customers who switched and pushed away who knows how many potential customers all for that mighty buck.

In comparison, an iPhone 5 costs about $199 to build and has a manufacturing cost of $8 (thanks to Foxconn). What we're seeing with the Z3 being priced below $200 is the lower manufacturing cost (Foxconn) and the lower costs for the OS who has matured and is now being maintained rather than being created. If they were to pump out a high-end device with Foxconn I see no reason why they can't stay below the $500 mark. I'm not holding my breath though as Chen stated that the high-end devices will still be build by BlackBerry.

Cost wasn't an object, for me at least. The problem BB had with the Z10 was:
A) All apps purchased for "legacy" devices are now useless. (All apps purchased on my original iPad in 2010 still work today on my latest and greatest iPad.)

B) Key core apps that I used on my legacy devices weren't even available on the Z10, and of last week when I checked, still aren't.

C) Reboot issues when the Z10 was released.

D) 720 screen in the age of 1080P.

Nope. You're the one unable to understand. For PC to get to the capability of a Mac, it probably only costs half (or a little bit more than half) the price, and therefore Mac is overpriced in that sense. Don't you just get that there are people willing to buy a product, knowing it's overpriced? Apple can slap whatever price and people will buy it. But whatever, you won't get it.

Try price matching a Windows PC spec for spec with a Mac, then tell me it's overpriced. Add the fact that I can then take a Mac, purchased from anywhere, to an Apple store, and get customer support. Try price matching a Mac Pro. Yea, it's overkill for most people, but if you need or even want it's power...

Also look at its resale value.

:@CGK - Apple devices are indeed overpriced. You can't just look at people that do have Iphone, there is a vast number of us that do not have Iphone just because of price
I was eyeing Z10 from launch day, but I bought it when street price dropped to 210 eur. When I bought my Z10, street price for more than year old Iphone 4s was 270 eur.

And if you wanted to sell your release day iPhone, how much would you get for it ? If you sold your release day Z10, well do the math, and tell me which one is really less expensive.

[Raddin]

OPPO has always been like that even when they first released a 1080p device before everyone else. If it wasn't for OPPO running Android I would have gotten it instead of a BlackBerry 10 phone. If they ever decide to release na Ubuntu Touch phone I'll leave BlackBerry 10

Posted via CB10

You could always put Ubuntu Touch on the OPPO yourself. They already ported it to the find 5 and I'd be truly shocked if it doesn't come out for the find 7 soon.

[Zirak]

Are not most* of these Android low cost phone manufacturers Losing money? Is it possible that BB/Apple/Samsung pricing is appropriate for a business model and the others are too low? Or are we simply looking at this from a customer point of view and everything we buy should be inexpensive?

[Thunderbuck]

I think Oppo may be trying to buy market share away from Samsung. Bear in mind that it's not easy to find a similar spec for a similar price even among other Androids.

Watched that preview; I don't think I've ever seen an Android phone that I found this appealing.