4 ms·

And nobody should. With Nexus4 available for 300$.

sgpl 13y ago
There is a huge potential market for "cheap" smartphones particularly in developing countries, and because of the nature of iOS, Android is the only viable game in town. So people will continue to buy subsidized/cheap smartphones for a long time, atleast outside of the US. Bloomberg recently published a very informed article [1] on the subject where one company, "Micromax increased shipments to 633,000 smartphones in the last quarter of 2012 from 9,990 a year earlier, while [another], Karbonn grew to 304,000 from zero." Because of the price disparity of phones from Apple/Reputable Android manufacturers, there is a very large untapped market for sub_$100 smartphones in China and India. [1] http://goo.gl/PHKIH http://goo.gl/PHKIH
- kevin_p 13y ago
  I know you're mostly talking about cheap phones, but I'm still going to quibble with the other half of your "subsidized/cheap smartphones" point. Subsidised phones are much less common in developing countries because the credit system is less developed. Even where they do exist, they're structured as "buy the phone for $x then get $x/24 off your bill each month for 2 years" rather than the "get the phone now and pay it off over the contract period" system in the EU/US, so they're not a way of getting a phone you couldn't afford to buy outright.
kelnos 13y ago
And with a phone as beautifully-designed and high-end as the N4 selling for $300, someone could certainly sell a perfectly usable Android phone for much less. (Unless Google is selling it at a loss.)
- dirkgently 13y ago
  > Unless Google is selling it at a loss. Not sure about the loss, but I am sure they are not making much money from it.
  - baddox 13y ago
    What makes you so sure about that? The estimations I have seen of Apple's insane profit margins on mobile devices suggest that it's entirely possible. Granted, Apple produce at a much larger scale than the Nexus 4, but I still think there is plenty of margin for Google to be making reasonable profits from the Nexus 4.
    - rahoulb 13y ago
      Google certainly stated that there is zero margin on the Nexus 7 (http://www.knowyourmobile.com/google/17658/google-says-theres-no-margin-nexus-7 http://www.knowyourmobile.com/google/17658/google-says-there...). I'm sure I read the same about the 4 but can't find any sources, so maybe I just confused the two.
      - kelnos 13y ago
        The display & digitizer are probably the highest-cost items on the N7, so the smaller N4 would likely be significantly cheaper, assuming the rest of the costs are the same (which they likely aren't; hard to compare).
  - kelnos 13y ago
    So what if they aren't? Let's say the N4 really does cost close to $350 to produce. There are tons of ways to make a cheaper, but still usable phone: smaller screen, lower-res screen, less expensive glass, slower SoC, less RAM. Hell, the customer cost bump for 8GB->16GB flash is $50; the cost bump for Google/LG is a small fraction of that. Let's remember that the N4 is Google's flagship phone right now. I'd be astonished if they couldn't make a low- to mid-end phone for $100-$150 less.

sgpl 13y ago

There is a huge potential market for "cheap" smartphones particularly in developing countries, and because of the nature of iOS, Android is the only viable game in town. So people will continue to buy subsidized/cheap smartphones for a long time, atleast outside of the US. Bloomberg recently published a very informed article [1] on the subject where one company, "Micromax increased shipments to 633,000 smartphones in the last quarter of 2012 from 9,990 a year earlier, while [another], Karbonn grew to 304,000 from zero." Because of the price disparity of phones from Apple/Reputable Android manufacturers, there is a very large untapped market for sub_$100 smartphones in China and India. [1] http://goo.gl/PHKIH http://goo.gl/PHKIH

kevin_p 13y ago
I know you're mostly talking about cheap phones, but I'm still going to quibble with the other half of your "subsidized/cheap smartphones" point. Subsidised phones are much less common in developing countries because the credit system is less developed. Even where they do exist, they're structured as "buy the phone for $x then get $x/24 off your bill each month for 2 years" rather than the "get the phone now and pay it off over the contract period" system in the EU/US, so they're not a way of getting a phone you couldn't afford to buy outright.

kelnos 13y ago

And with a phone as beautifully-designed and high-end as the N4 selling for $300, someone could certainly sell a perfectly usable Android phone for much less. (Unless Google is selling it at a loss.)

dirkgently 13y ago
> Unless Google is selling it at a loss. Not sure about the loss, but I am sure they are not making much money from it.
- baddox 13y ago
  What makes you so sure about that? The estimations I have seen of Apple's insane profit margins on mobile devices suggest that it's entirely possible. Granted, Apple produce at a much larger scale than the Nexus 4, but I still think there is plenty of margin for Google to be making reasonable profits from the Nexus 4.
  - rahoulb 13y ago
    Google certainly stated that there is zero margin on the Nexus 7 (http://www.knowyourmobile.com/google/17658/google-says-theres-no-margin-nexus-7 http://www.knowyourmobile.com/google/17658/google-says-there...). I'm sure I read the same about the 4 but can't find any sources, so maybe I just confused the two.
    - kelnos 13y ago
      The display & digitizer are probably the highest-cost items on the N7, so the smaller N4 would likely be significantly cheaper, assuming the rest of the costs are the same (which they likely aren't; hard to compare).
- kelnos 13y ago
  So what if they aren't? Let's say the N4 really does cost close to $350 to produce. There are tons of ways to make a cheaper, but still usable phone: smaller screen, lower-res screen, less expensive glass, slower SoC, less RAM. Hell, the customer cost bump for 8GB->16GB flash is $50; the cost bump for Google/LG is a small fraction of that. Let's remember that the N4 is Google's flagship phone right now. I'd be astonished if they couldn't make a low- to mid-end phone for $100-$150 less.