Comment by 51Cards | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 51Cards | Hacker News Reader

Nahhhhh... this is like saying "We have too many car manufacturers... we all need to narrow down and settle on a couple key models"

While we as tech-heads tend to follow all of the market, the author is right, most users don't. But to me this is what naturally focuses the choice. "I had a Motorola, show me only those because I liked it" "I am on ATT, I'm not moving, show me only ATT phones" "I want a big screen, I have poor eyesight, make it big"

The average customer even without being a tech-head knows what they like and will automatically self-limit their choices to a manageable field. The fact that they may still have 2-4 devices that fit their general spec is a big plus for Android, not a detriment because they still have choice. It is WE, those of us who follow every possible model launch that start comparing specs and plans and proto-types. I do admit this does become a little frustrating for us... but never forget, WE are not the bulk of consumers.

Great points that you've made. One thing though, I would argue that we've seen this issue in action: "Nahhhhh... this is like saying "We have too many car manufacturers... we all need to narrow down and settle on a couple key models"

That is essentially what the reborn GM has done - it paired down a wide range of models by their brands into just a handful. If the recovery of the company is any indication, consumers responded well to a whittled down set of choices over fragmentation set.

True, but I would offer the difference between "Too many models" and "too many models at a manufacturer (or in this case, per OS)".

GM fragmented their product line too much to offset the manufacturing and R&D costs to support all of those models. Narrowing focus was more to save their own skin than to make the consumer's life and easier. I would guess (this is purely off the top of my head) that the number of GM's sold hasn't changed that much... but what has changed is GM's profit margin per model, and thus cost savings allow cost cuts to the consumer which may have increased sales. HTC would have the same problem if they produced 2-3x the number of models they do now.

To me the original article reads more like "cars with four wheels have too many choices... one company needs to make four wheel ones, one needs to make two wheel ones, and one needs to make unicycles". That's the jist I got from it anyhow.

Without googling, I'd say most Android manufacturers have less diversity than GM, or a typical car company. It should also be noted that each car model has about 3 different trim levels, meaning each car company probably has 50 or so combinations at any one point.

Exactly. There's a ton of android phones, but only a few per carrier, and those are mostly graduated on a pricing scale. Don't know about other carriers, but Verizon is pretty smart with its B&M stores about how to narrow down the selection for customers. If anything there's way more choice among non-smartphones on a carrier then there is among droid phones.

I've never understood how the carriers can differentiate on price, either. Given that any contract with data will cost $1500-2000 over two years, the difference between a free phone and a $399 premium phone is pretty insubstantial.

The only conclusion I can reach is that a whole lot of consumers have never worked out what they're actually paying for the contract. And that's REALLY scary.

That's why T-Mobile's now non-advertised Even More Plus plans are so nice. No contract, pay less per month, and buy your phone outright. If you sign-up in a store you can even get an 0% interest, $0 fee payment plan for your phone, really the best way to go.

That sounds like a fantastic idea, but after brief look at the T-Mobile website it looks like the Even More Plus plans don't come with any minutes. Can you buy minutes as a monthly add-on, or do you have to pay the crazy $0.45 per minute call rate?

They do, they mirror the contract plans exactly, but are $20 less a month. They took all the "Even More Plus" plans off their website, the information you see is related to pre-paid, and not Even More Plus. You can only get that information by walking into a store, it's really unfortunate, but they don't want to cannibalize their contracts.

Picture of plan and flyer: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2009/10/...

http://www.t-mobile.com/templates/generic.aspx?PAsset=Pro_Pr...

That's really amazing. Were these introduced recently? Do you think there's much chance of them realizing what a great deal they are and discontinuing the plans?

I think they were introduced around 2 years ago. There's lots of buzz on the interweb about whether they'll be kept, right now the consensus is yes, based on T-Mobile's feedback, however, they clearly can't discontinue if you sign up for it, so get going while the going is still good.

The thing is though, car manufacturers only update their cars once a year, and for the most part, they keep the same models, just with small updates. Verizon might be getting a brand new Android phone every month and retiring old ones just as fast, making it hard to keep track of what the best phone at the moment is.

That only makes it hard if you're buying a phone by name. The answer is always, "Whichever one is in the store," which is what most people will buy anyway.

Didn't brand/model overload play a big role in the decline of US auto makers? I've heard this repeated many times but I don't know if it's true or not. Given that almost all of the US automakers have drastically cut their brands/models over the last few years I tend to believe it's true.

I agree, I would say that what we need, to your point, is a single site which all manufacturers upload product details for side by side comparison.

I worked at a startup in 1999 that did this: decide.com

The idea was to show side-by-side phone and plan features from all the carriers and then you get to pick what best suits you - we even had a feature where you could put in your commute route and it would show you the best carrier coverage for that route.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com