I thought the suggestion was more that by producing just one variant for all markets/regions/carriers, Google/LG can leverage economies of scale to bring the ov

I thought the suggestion was more that by producing just one variant for all markets/regions/carriers, Google/LG can leverage economies of scale to bring the overall price down. I haven't looked at the S3, but past Samsung models have had a bunch of variants marketed under the one model name. (How much this really factors into the pricing, I doubt if we or Wired can really know.)