Quote:
Originally Posted by uncyherb
Voda & Telstra seemed (from my perspective) to have just said to themselves "Meh... stuff 'em, they'll buy it because they have to... make stupid plans designed to rip 'em off, cos they're all stupid and will buy it anyway."
Thank god Australians don't seem that stupid.
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From the carriers point of view, its all about the math on per customer profit.
If they don't pay Apple until the product is sold to the end user (or to be specific, don't pay the subsidy) they they aren't carrying alot of cost or risk by not selling the handset.
But from a per customer basis, on profit margin, that 1 Telstra customer is probably worth 10 Optus customers and about 2 or 3 Vodafone cutomers.
And when they are looking at it that way, it doesn't matter.
It also doesn't matter if you are viewing the iPhone as 'just another handset' - the carriers are in a world where they are boss, the fact someone might align with a network entirely over a handset may not have sunk into their heads.
Kudos to Optus for 'getting' the iPhone and what its about.
That all said, it's hard to imagine what Vodafone's management will be like next week, there might be a few post mortems there, there has probably NEVER been such a stark example of competition in action.
Telstra - well, they'll just bank another couple of million in profit for today and spend it advertising a network no one can afford to use.