No vendor sells the iPhone 4S from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) with a contract on Amazon, and the $499 price tag does not compare favorably with the Lumia 900’s $50 sticker price. Nokia/Microsoft’s other problem with the Sunday launch is that many of AT&T’s and Microsoft’s bricks-and-mortar stores were closed for the holiday.
One way to look at Lumia sales is that Nokia/Microsoft started from so far down that anything looks like up (and, in fact, is up). Another way to look at the sales is that the low-priced phone ($100 list, with yesterday’s $50 special from AT&T) could be shooting for a toehold in the low-end of the market for smartphones. If Nokia/Microsoft can actually make money on a $100 sales price, that will put a lot of pressure on the Android smartphone makers.
Paul Ausick