Many leading suppliers use PriceTRAX to track and compare smartphones, mobile phones, tablets and dongles across 120 carriers and 190 retailers in 43 countries.  Weekly updates to unsubsidised, pre-paid and post-paid contract pricing across retailers and operators are presented in a comprehensive and easy-to-use web interface.

You are invited to attend our exclusive analysis breakfast presentations at MWC where you can try out PriceTRAX. If you would like to register for this breakfast event click HERE-->>

The PriceTRAX demonstration will show its ease of use and efficiency in answering questions such as:

·         Have any of our competitors’ prices changed this week?

·         Are we losing margin through unnecessarily low price points?

·         What are the most popular market entry price points?

·         How does tablet pricing compare across retailers and network operators?

If you feel that someone in your company or a colleague within the industry may benefit from a demonstration please feel free to forward this announcement to them.

If you would like to register for this breakfast event click HERE-->>

Stephen Entwistle

You can Follow me on twitter.com/sentwistle1419

We’ve used our PriceTRAX tracking database to plot flagship smartphone depreciation. The work demonstrates the pricing divide between ultra-premium and entry-level devices, and the role older high-end handsets have in filling the void.  

To try the PriceTRAX database for yourself click HERE

The work also highlights the positive impact of branding on handset retail values.  As a product ages, you expect its retail price to fall.  In the case of smartphones, this decline has been difficult to quantify so we used a large number of historic pricing data points across 105 channels in 37 countries to shed light on the figures.

Smartphones have a retail lifecycle of around two years. By the end of this, most brands have reduced product retail pricing by 34% on average, although there are notable exceptions; such as Samsung’s S1, Apple’s iPhone 4 and the HTC Wildfire, all holding their pricing well for different reasons. The S1 demonstrates the advantage of being early to market.

• As one of the first of the ultra-high-spec “super-phones” it was well positioned to hold its price through the early part of its lifecycle due to fewer competitors.

Apple iPhone prices tend not to become discounted due to a tightly managed product branding strategy which focuses on premium smartphones. As a result, depreciation during the first 18 months of the product lifecycle is substantially less compared to competing smartphone handsets. Instead, their value slides by 25% between 22 and 28 months of age.  Clearly, iPhones have upheld a clear price differential compared to their counterparts.

The HTC Wildfire shows an extraordinarily low depreciation rate. It was introduced to challenge smartphone prices and has proved to be depreciation resistant compared to others.

A crop of second generation smartphones such as the Samsung S2, Nokia N8, LG Optimus and BlackBerry Curve 3 8520 have similar price depreciation rates 12–24 months after their launches. Another influencing factor would be vendor’s handset portfolio refresh rate impacting on the retail value of existing products and this will be the focus of a later study.

PriceTRAX is an online comparison database from Strategy Analytics tracking contract, unsubsidized and pre-paid retail pricing for smartphones, tablets and mobile phones through carrier and retail channels.

To try the PriceTRAX database for yourself click HERE

Steve Entwistle

We recently did some analysis of the nationwide experiment carried out by mobile network operators (MNOs) in Spain.  When MNOs tried removing the subsidies applied to contract-based smartphones we used PriceTRAX, our online price comparison database to monitor price fluctuations and then our Wireless Operator Strategies team looked at the impact on connection volumes.

Movistar, Vodafone and Yoigo were the frontrunners in this experiment. Orange did not take part, possibly because their subsidies were already lower compared to its competitors.  Download PriceTRAX's latest complimentary extract: Observing Spanish Smartphone Pricing Dynamics: Are Subsidies Changing? for the full story, summary details and the methodology.

Movistar was the first to start removing subsidies on smartphones in Spain, which increased their handset prices by more than €100 in April 2012. Vodafone and Yoigo followed in May, increasing their up-front handset price by 100%.

When these smartphone handset subsidies were removed, it’s no surprise that Movistar’s gross connection volumes took an annual fall of 42%, while Vodafone saw a 36% reduction in Q2 (Source: Wireless Operator Strategies).

The above chart shows that after the initial jump of over €100 in April/May, the average smartphone cost on a contract has since fallen back somewhat suggesting a softening of the MNOs resolve.

If you like to try the PriceTRAX database for yourself CLICK HERE >>>

We used the Strategy Analytics PriceTRAX online database tool to examine the history of price drops in the US market.  It appears that Nokia’s Lumia 900 has held its launch price as long or longer than all of its peers.

We plotted PriceTRAX data for up-front handset prices for comparable large screen Windows Phone 7.5 and the Samsung Galaxy S2.  The charts show pricing from launch and appears to demonstrate that it is quite normal for smartphone up-front prices to decline in the first 3 months after launch.

PriceTRAX is a cellular device intelligence database providing weekly retail and mobile operator pricing.  If you would like to try the PriceTRAX database for yourself CLICK HERE.

PriceTRAX data has been used to track retail price depreciation for specific smartphones in our recently published database extract: What's It Worth? This methodology has also been applied to determine the effect of branding on smartphone retail value (based on PAYG and unsubsidized prices for OEM portfolios).

Apple iPhones are sound investments for end users, showing negligable depreciation during the first 18 month of their lifecycle, sliding -25% in the 6 months between 22 and 28 months of age, but still maintaining a clear price differentiation from their counterparts. Nokia's smartphones appear to depreciate within a month of release, and HTC's handsets after 3 months. RIM's smartphones hold their value during the first 10 months of availability, followed by quick devaluation. Samsung's pricing strategy is more interesting; attracting a 10% discount on introduction with average retail price peaking 1 month after release, however results in a net depreciation higher than the rival OEMs at -50% (from maximum retail price).

Smartphones have a retail lifecycle of over 2 years, however by this time their value has reduced by approx -40% for most brands. Apple enjoys slower depreciation, however their portfolio is exclusively premium smartphones. A vendor's refresh rate for handsets will impact on the retail value of existing products, this will be the focus of a later extract.

This is just one of many ways to analyse PriceTRAX data, PriceTRAX clients have access to over 5 million pricing datapoints for smartphones, mobile phones and tablets (including historic pricing back to May 2010 and up to the current day) which continues to grow weekly; to contact a member of the PriceTRAX team to discuss this extensive market intelligence resource CLICK HERE, or TRY PriceTRAX for yourself.

In December 2011, combining features from two services, Strategy Analytics was able to correlate specifications with phone tariffs; the results may be seen in this complimentary report:

HOW MUCH? - Predicting smartphone Retail Pricing from Key Components

In their choice of smartphones, consumers look closely at the specifications of certain key components while bearing in mind their likely pricing.  So what are those particular components, their specifications and their pricing?

Getting to the bottom of this, we analysed close on 100 smartphones using the massed data from our SpecTRAX and PriceTRAX databases which revealed strong linear trends between handset specification and smartphone tariffs.  If the relationship is linear, there is the basis for reliably predicting smartphone pricing - and with this knowledge, there will be opportunities such as targeting gaps in the market with new products.

If you would like to learn more about SpecTRAX or PriceTRAX, just click their names.

Regards, Steve Entwistle

REF: E62

We have used PriceTRAX handset retail pricing data to analyse some smartphones which are available across various BRICS countries.  The results available in this full write up show mixed tendencies;

South Africa had the highest average smartphone pre-tax retail price closely followed by Brazil and Russia.   The report highlights the differences in smartphone product availability across these countries. For example South Africa showed a strong bias towards high end devices which results in the higher retail ASPs.

Overall, Brazil had the highest average retail price when taxes were included and India had the lowest, irrespective of product type, with the remaining BRICS countries jostling for position in the middle ground– full details on p.2

Non-smartphones were approximately a third of the price of smartphones in each country, ranging from $13 (Samsung E1080) in South Africa, to $890 (LG KM900 Arena) in Brazil.

Samsung’s Corby II S3850 and Galaxy Y were the lowest entry-level smartphones at around $100 in China, India and Brazil. Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10 at $104 was the most affordable smartphone in South Africa.

This report analyses the differences in Pay As You Go (PAYG) or pre-paid retail handset prices across the BRICS markets (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) which account for approximately one third of the global population. The PriceTRAX data capture for this report includes: date, country, network and operator, handset OEM, model name and retail price, tariff name, price and contract length. This amounted to 32,000 data points from 188 handsets that appeared in operator portfolios across three or more BRICS countries. 

If you want to try the PriceTRAX database for yourself, just click HERE.

Stephen Entwistle

This blog touches upon similar topics from several other Strategy Analytics services.

For more information about the mobile device market including wholesale pricing, see our Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) service.

For more information about the emerging markets, see our Emerging Markets Communications Strategies (EMCS) service.

Many leading suppliers use PriceTRAX to track and compare smartphones, mobile phones, tablets and dongles across 100 carriers in 31 countries.  Weekly updates to both Pre-paid and Post-paid retail and operator pricing are presented in a comprehensive and easy-to-use web interface.

You are invited to attend our exclusive analysis breakfast presentations at MWC where you can try out PriceTRAX. If you would like to register for this breakfast event click HERE-->>

The PriceTRAX demonstration will show its ease of use and efficiency in answering questions such as:

·         Have any of our competitors’ prices changed this week?

·         Are we losing margin through unnecessarily low price points?

·         What are the most popular market entry price points?

·         How does tablet pricing compare across network operators?

If you feel that someone in your company or a colleague within the industry may benefit from a demonstration please feel free to forward this announcement to them.

If you would like to register for this breakfast event click HERE-->>

Stephen Entwistle

Follow me on twitter.com/sentwistle1419