<Seems pretty dumb to give them away to me considering the fact that
most of
<the phones don't even mention the manufacturer unles you interpret the
<model #'s.
as i understand it, there are actually list prices for the phones. the
last time i was in japan, some of the latest model phones were selling
around 40,000 yen. as far as i know, docomo gives them to its customers
for around 10,000. that's 30,000 in handset subsidies. docomo probably
gets a discount on them as well and with the average ARPU for docomo at
something like 8,000 yen for voice only. that's less than four months to
recoup the subsidy. somehow, in japan, the business model works.
that is not the case with other markets. in south korea, where handset
subsidies are now banned by the government because operators were
running themselves into the ground by giving away handsets. in hong
kong, operators like Smartone are posting losses because of hundreds of
millions of handset subsidies because their ARPU is so low. not a pretty picture.
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Received on Thu Dec 21 06:46:07 2000