I don't think the price comparison is fair.
If someone spends 700$ on a phone, he would be ok spending 200$ if the system does work smoothly.
What I think people are more skeptic about is performance and user experience.
What I think people are more skeptic about is performance and user experience.
(I've always had a prepaid smartphone, and the options were atrocious in 2010 and barely existed beyond the Nexus in 2012)
Here in Europe, contracts are the exception not the rule.
Most people just charge with 15 to 20 euros their SIM card whenever they feel like it, and have to pay full price for mobile phone.
Or pay it in rates to only have it unlocked from the network at the end of two years, so they are going to use that phone until it dies or gets stolen.
I'm pretty sure that hasn't been true for years.
"Around 70% of customers in Western Europe and China use prepaid phones with the figure rising to over 90% for customers in India and Africa"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepay_mobile_phone
I only know people with contracts regarding iPhone, which is the only affordable way to get them new in many of the European countries.
As teamhappy pointed out, I am kind of wrong, as the data did indeed change for contracts, but was is still low in 2015 regarding southern countries, the ones I tend to visit regularly.
But it would still be nice to know if someone can point out to 2017 data.
What has become super common is for home cable provider to provide SIM with around 2G of data in order to pay monthly broadband charge. SIM recharge being easier than vanilla broadband recharge.
> while in Europe the proportion is 50%, reaching 75% in
> Northwestern Europe as compared to 40% in South-Eastern
> European states.
Data is from 2015. Given the overall trend I wouldn't be surprised if even more people have switched to contract by now.
But I do agree from 2012 to 2015 it did change in the direction you meant.
I think that's what the parent was talking about: Most people that wouldn't mind a simpler UX and less performance can't afford this phone/dock in a first place... and the people that would afford this (have an S8 and don't mind buying a $300 dock) will be skeptical about the usefulness and performance of this system.
People will feel that they can absorb $20 or even $30 extra per month on their plan for a top tier phone. Absorbing any hit over $200 when someone lives hand to mouth makes these a non-starter.
The best chance for mass success for this option is for it to be included in the base purchase.
Also, majority of people just use email and word suite. An S9 is easily capable of doing these tasks and it saves the individual or company cost of a cpu box (400 USD at the low end).
My point is, it really doesn't matter what the reality of the cost/loan is, people who think "$30/mo! I can do that!" are probably not also going to think $200 seems like a good price for basically a cable to plug my phone into my computer.
Obviously, your other point was that it could come with a plan too but that seems doable but also there's yet another cost on top of the phone they were just barely justifying already. I'm not saying you're wrong but I think the price of this device is ridiculous.
I might pay $80 for it if it were really something I needed but, as others have said, I don't carry my phone around to be a computer. I carry it to be a phone. On top of that, I never really have a situation where I've got a keyboard, mouse, and monitor just sitting around waiting for something to activate them. So I'm not sure when I'd use this anyway.