"This sounds rather desperate if you ask me! They're giving it out for free to uphold their dying brand -- doesn't seem like they're even trying to make a profit right now."
Does nobody consider the market that they are referring to before commenting? Handsets are commonly offered for free in the UK. The Palm Pre is available free on the same contracts that the iPhone 3G 8GB is offered for free on, for example... Palm will be turning profit from the sale of their handsets to O2, who subesquently resell the handset for free on expensive tarrifs.
Of course, almost every handset sold by a UK operator is free on certain price plans, which has been the case for quite a long time. UK price plans are, also, more expensive than those in the US, even though the infrastructure required to serve a more densley populated country is proportionally less expensive. 'Free' handsets ultimately cost consumers rather a lot and it seems to make a great deal more sense for consumers to pay the retail price for a handset and save money on their price plan. Maybe such a system could even contribute to a stabilization or decline of the rampant consumption that is causing so much waste...
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"This sounds rather desperate if you ask me! They're giving it out for free to uphold their dying brand -- doesn't seem like they're even trying to make a profit right now."
Does nobody consider the market that they are referring to before commenting? Handsets are commonly offered for free in the UK. The Palm Pre is available free on the same contracts that the iPhone 3G 8GB is offered for free on, for example... Palm will be turning profit from the sale of their handsets to O2, who subesquently resell the handset for free on expensive tarrifs.
Of course, almost every handset sold by a UK operator is free on certain price plans, which has been the case for quite a long time. UK price plans are, also, more expensive than those in the US, even though the infrastructure required to serve a more densley populated country is proportionally less expensive. 'Free' handsets ultimately cost consumers rather a lot and it seems to make a great deal more sense for consumers to pay the retail price for a handset and save money on their price plan. Maybe such a system could even contribute to a stabilization or decline of the rampant consumption that is causing so much waste...