Technomaly » price

HTC Incredible Undergoes Incredible Price Cut

Asterios Kokkinos — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:00:13 +0000

What’s this? Were you planning on paying $200 + a two year service contract for your HTC Incredible? How dare you, sir, throw away good money like that in the middle of a multi-year recession. It’s a good thing you read Technomaly (and that we read InformationWeek), because you can find the Incredible for $149.99 + a two year service contract on Amazon.com.

For those of you who didn’t read the article we did about the Incredible two days ago (again, how dare you), it’s HTC’s new Droid phone. It’s got an 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash (which means like, two flashes? I don’t understand. I’m so dumb), touchscreen, 8 gigs of onboard memory, microSD expansion slot and Friend Stream, which is one of those little programs that puts your Twitter, Facebook and Flickr together into one easy to ignore mess.

People are calling the Incredible the fastest Droid phone on the market, which I’ll decide for myself once I get my dirty hands on one of these bad boys. But for now, I’m swept up in the new-cell-phone excitement!

FCC: Make Broadband Cheaper, Jerks

Asterios Kokkinos — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:00:36 +0000

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski

Did you know that 93 million Americans have either dial-up access or no access at all to the internet? When I heard this, I assumed that it was due to infastructure, but it’s actually a simpler hurdle – price – that’s keeping most users off high speed.

That’s according to the FCC, who’ll soon be releasing its National Broadband Plan to Congress, a plan which includes a blueprint for extending broadband to underserved areas of the United States.

So how’s the FCC going to force providers to lower prices? Good question. Right now, there’s a debate in the courts as to whether or not the FCC has any regulatory authority at all over providers – a federal appeals court will soon make that decision in the landmark Comcast net neutrality case.

Personally, I hope the FCC’s given the power they need to bring prices down. The internet’s gone from a luxury to a necessary utility. The government can regulate water and power, why not the internet? God knows my wallet could use a break.

Thoughts, Technomaly audience?

Source & Photo Source: Christian Science Monitor

Amazon eBook Price Wars: Macmillan Strikes Back!

Asterios Kokkinos — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:00:37 +0000

Here’s a simple one: Amazon.com is trying to set the prices of all e-books they sell at $9.99. Publishers don’t like this, as they sell their books for upwards of $16 and don’t want to lose the profit.

You’d think Amazon would want that extra cash, too – an increased sale price means more profit for the globe’s biggest book retailer, right? Well, not if they’re trying to move Kindles, they don’t. Amazon’s looking for a e-book pricing model that’s simple and cheap – take a loss on each e-book to more more of their e-book readers – but publishers are balking, moving from wholesale pricing models to what they call “agency” pricing models in order to restore the higher prices.

HarperCollins, Hachette and a just added Macmillan are the biggest of the defecting publishers, and are unilaterally setting their price points at $14.99 to $15.99 per e-book (with new releases going possibly as low as $12.99). Amazon, who needs their books, has no choice but to go along with it all.

This is good news for Steve Jobs, who seeking to avoid his iPad being outmaneuvered by the Kindle – both are e-book readers, and the one with the cheapest e-books could conquer the emerging e-publishing market. If he can keep parity with the Kindle’s prices (or undersell them), it’ll be just another reason to pick up an iPad.

Personally, I’ll be sticking with r-books – real books that actually exist in physical space – for the time being.

Source: VentureBeat

Image Source: Amazon.com