14 DAY TRIAL // Nokia's high-end smartphones are a bit too expensive to be sold in volumes, Simon Lee-Smith, European general manager for devices at Telefónica said recently.
According to him, Nokia has yet to find the right price point for these devices, as they are too expensive at the moment.
Moreover, he also said that, “if Nokia wants to sell in volume, they need to bring out devices which are cost-competitive,” a recent article on Telecoms.com reads.
However, it appears that future Nokia devices might be much cheaper than now, as the Finnish mobile phone maker has started to listen to what its wireless carrier partners have to say on the matter.
Apparently, existing devices are not “commercially effective,” and the issue involves high-end handsets such as the Nokia N8 or the Nokia N9, along with the newly launched Nokia Lumia 800 smartphone, which is based on Microsoft's Windows Phone platform.
“They need to be able to subsidise their high end smartphones, because they’re too expensive,” Simon Lee-Smith explained.
At the Nokia World event a few weeks back, the leading handset vendor unveiled their first Windows Phone devices, and announced that the high-end Lumia 800 will be released for €420 before taxes and subsidies.
Apparently, Nokia is not the only vendor who needs to bring the price for its phones down a bit, as both end-users and partner wireless carriers consider them a bit expensive the way they are now.
“All device manufacturers seem to think that a €400-plus device is the norm. Well, it isn’t. Customers and operators won’t pay that cost for a device which doesn’t differentiate sufficiently,” Lee-Smith continued.
Packing the smartphone with better hardware and new features is not always a good solution for handset vendors, especially if the price for the device goes up as well. Cheaper mobile phones should drive sales upwards, the carrier believes.