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Technology Stocks : Nokia (NOK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wyätt Gwyön who wrote (6816)	8/3/2000 1:31:47 PM
From: slacker711	Respond to of 34857

But once you have 60% penetration, the "kickstart" argument doesn't really make sense anymore. It seems like all you are doing with the gimmicks in such a scenario is increasing the churn. Noone ever said that being a carrier was easy.... Actually I think of it the other way....If you have a "greenfield" country with four operators (for example) each of them will be building out their networks and adding subs from the population that doesnt have cell-phones. At a certain point, all of the early-adopters are gone (the people who are willing to pay the high-price). You either need to entice customers who otherwise wouldnt want a cell-phone (dont want to pay the up-front fee) or you need to grab customers from competitors. This is where the subsidies come in handy.... Also, subsidies are normal part of business operations...Nokia (or at least MOT/Ericy does) subsidizes their low-end phones, GM subsidizes their low-end cars with profits from luxury sales, Compaq subsidizes their low-end PC's, @Home does it for their cable modems..... Each of the above is used to try and lock-in a customer. You just have to make sure that the overall economics of the subsidy make sense. Slacker