Mountain View Cellphones

10/28/2008 by www.mountainviewcellphones.com

The biggest grudge about early termination fees (ETF) is paying it.  So, this marketing tactic that has been the staple of the wireless business for about 10 years now is going the way of the dodo.  Sprint has announced the change in termination fees once their new billing system is in place…so that will be about another 3-4 months away (given how billing systems tend to never get installed flawlessly).

All the carriers are now moving to pro-rata early termination fees that decline over the time period of the contract.  I think this will increase churn throughout the industry as this was the #1 reason why people don’t change carrier relationships.  How many times have I heard “I’m under contract” when in reality customers got discounted hardware and don’t want to pay full value for it.

The ending of early termination fees could put a big dent in hardware manufacturers, also.  As carriers move more and more in the direction of letting the consumer bear the total cost of hardware (not subsidized by services), manufacturers are being put in front of the customer without subsidizing revenues for their products.  This will continue to push margins down for this sector as carriers can no longer subsidize the hardware thru service fees (in effect financing the hardware purchase with a loan to the customer).

As phones can do more and more, the cost goes up for everyone.  Carriers and manufacturers of major carriers have kept these costs from the consumer while prepaid services have passed on everything to the consumer.  Contract carriers will move more and more in the prepaid direction…even nearly identical phones in the prepaid versus contract worlds cost much different.  The carrier shield is being lifted and the manufacturer must face the consumer not only on features but on price, eye to eye.

Again, I say this is a good thing.  Carriers can dictate features of phones so it works with their networks (that’s ok) but manufacturers should be able to sell whatever they want that is tested and works to specification.  Consumers can get educated on the true price of a phone or smartphone, and we could probably eliminate some worthless positions in the carrier industry that do nothing but compare cost and benefit of phone pricing with services rather than letting the market and manufacturer decide on prices for handsets.

It’s an inevitable trend.   Sprint has had a no contract plan for 2 years now, but you would not know about it because no one is incented to sell it and it’s a horrible deal.  Verizon recently introduced no contract plans also but again…I’m certain this is more for goodwill with the FCC or some other State attorney general than actual corporate strategy.

Sprint’s One Touch is the first carrier attempt (that I know about) to put a standard GUI interface on all of the Carrier’s phone in addition to the manufacturer’s GUI.

This is a great standardization and a good way for Sprint to have a more seamless experience for customers with any Sprint handset.

For now, the One Touch is a carousel of items at the bottom of the screen that can be programmed to quickly do the 10-20 things you do all the time with your device.  You can program the carousel tiles to access a particular site (rather than taking 2-3 steps to find the web app, open the browser, and then pick your favorite).  Not only will with work with web sites, but it will work with specific phone features, IM Mom, email Bob, calling home, applications like facebook, etc…

This is unique to Sprint and allows Sprint customers to be able to get the best phone they want and still be able to do what they want with a push of a button.  Secondly, it helps the carrier provide a difference versus other carriers by making their products easier to use.  Ease of use will be key to driving Sprint’s data centric strategy going forward.  As phones can do so much more, it’s critical Sprint to focus on making the features easy to use or people just won’t adopt it.  Sure you have the 20% tech crowd that will go thru much trouble to adopt the coolest features, but the other 80% of the population will try once or twice and then just give up.

A great move for the carrier.

Lastly, we have tested One Touch internally and it works great.  It’s simple and easy to use and does allow you to customize your phone experience to what you like quickly and to improve the experience quickly.

The turnaround is working.

10/27/2008  By www.mountainviewcellphones.com

Sprint has a great new line up of phones releasing into the Christmas season.  Here is everything new now and going into the near future.

1.  Samsung Rant  (EVDO Rev 0 version of the popular LG Rumor Phone).  Better and slightly bigger in all respects, yet has the same price point of $49.99.  Comes in Red and blue.

2.  LG Lotus.  A great compact flip phone with a QWERTY keyboard.  Purple and Black colos.

3.   HTC Diamond and HTC Touch Pro.  The Touch Pro is a smoking product.  Windows 6.1, virtual keyboard and real keyboard, expandable memory, 3.2 MP camera, AWESOME screen resolution.  It will sell well for those who want the top of the line unit.

4.  Sprint Air RAVE.  Discussed previously, but allows your own cell phone tower at any location with a high speed Internet connection.

5.  Samsung 220 and 320.  New basic phone line up.  The 320 is FREE phone with mail in rebate.  Buy 5 get 5 Free!!! as marketing would say

6.   Samsung Highnote.  This is THE music phone.  It’s much better than the UpStage it replaces and comes with a high quality compact speaker that can fill a room with your beats.  You can bring the party with you anywhere now.  I’m certain some amateur film student will be using this as background music to save time and money during the shoot.

7.  Sanyo Eclipse refresh with One Touch.  Illumination phone…pretty cool looking…otherwise a great multimedia phone that easy to find in your purse.

8.  New Nextel Blackberry.  Curve with a PTT button.  It will be a good device.

This is the best handset line-up Sprint has ever had.  The turnaround is actually producing some very real results now.