Okay, I admit that one snowflake doesn't make a blizzard. But one handset sale means the conditions are at least sort of right.
You were a bit wrong on your 'plan' criticism. $1.50 has always been the price area at which service providers would be starting. That's not a 50% discount. The service rollout is only three months late [apart from the year lost due to Zenit and other stuff before 1999]. That's not too bad considering all that needs doing and the service providers have obviously decided to take as much time as they can get away with before the clock starts ticking on their exclusive deals. Though they might say they simply preferred to have the full constellation in place to ensure high quality service.
Since Ericy and Telit didn't have handsets ready, I can understand the GSM regions being delayed a while.
The handset prices were never fixed. They have obviously decided that the demand for handsets is going to be so high, even at $1.70 per minute for in-country service and $3 for international, that they can charge heaps for handsets. If there is a shortage of handsets due to popular demand, there is no sense in selling them cheaply.
I suppose that if demand is a little slow, the service providers will do the usual thing and fund the handsets from minute sales.
It's encouraging in a way that the service providers are pricing it high - they obviously are convinced that there is huge demand and it would be foolish to go lower to start since they would not be able to meet demand. If they are wrong on that, then they are going to be fired forthwith! After the shambles of Iridium and the claims of 'learning from the Iridium mistakes', it would be simply total stupidity to overprice Globalstar. I don't believe they have got it right, and the minutes should be much, much cheaper to start and raise those prices if demand goes berserk. But they claim to know what they are doing. We'll see.
They would have zero excuse if they have got it wrong and the whole thing is a fizzer. They should be handed over to the more imaginative British medieval prison wardens in the Tower of London if they are wrong.
The minute demand will be inversely proportional to the square of the price. As you say, minute demand is the Maginot Line. They have built the line at $1.70 per minute. With everything pointing due East and nothing to the North. I have a sinking feeling that the service providers are re-fighting the cellphone wars of the 1980s with government telecom monopoly perspectives since they spent their formative years in government-run monopolies.
The concept of Feral Marketing is beyond them. They still operate in the archaic world of government registered and marketing management approved 'price plans'. They have obviously not been on any Web Marketing 101 courses. They don't know to apply "When The Cat's Away, The Rats Will Play" pricing.
They don't know of the modern 'Blitzkrieg' marketing concepts. The Maginot Line is now spick and span, new and ready for the drama to unfold. Let's see if it holds. I bet there will be ICO panzers swooping around behind the line with really cheap pricing. Globalstar should cut them off with really cheap minutes and their own Blitzkrieg before the ICO panzers have even been launched.
I'm keeping plenty of powder dry. If they are now selling handsets, well know in a month. It will be simply unbelievable if they repeat yet another Iridium blunder = start with minutes expensive then try to scramble their way down in the midst of bankruptcy and loss of confidence. They simply MUST be right that $1.70 per minute will see every phone sold at $1,500 and billions of minutes used.
Mqurice |
