This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive
compensation for actions taken through them.
Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) new flagship smartphone, the Lumia 900, will not carry a premium price in the U.S. The smartphone’s retail price will be as low as $99.99 and AT&T (NYSE: T) will begin to sell the handset on April 8. The Lumia 900 has features that should make it a reasonable rival to high-end Samsung models and the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone, but it may carry a price so low that the public does not view it as a premium product. That is the irony of Nokia’s push into the U.S. smartphone market. The Lumia 900 has such a low price that it could be considered “cheap,” even though its price point has been set to draw the highest end consumers who want “value.”
The Lumia 900 has most of the features that an expensive smartphone needs. Its screen is 4.3 inches. It works on the AT&T 4G network. It operates on a 1.4 GHz processor. It has sophisticated video and photo capture technology. Its battery is powerful enough to support seven hours of talk time.
The Lumia 900’s price is the same as Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry products. The BlackBerry is a smartphone that has quickly fallen out of favor. The Lumia 900 also has the same price as Motorola’s (NYSE: MMI) Atrix. Motorola is another smartphone company that has recently lost market share.
The most popular smartphones AT&T sells have prices of $199.99 or above. This includes the iPhone at $399.99 and the Samsung Galaxy Note, which retails for as much as $299.99. Samsung probably will pass Nokia in global handset sales, based primarily on smartphone market share, sometime this year. Nokia has held the top spot for years.
The launch of the Nokia Lumia 900 may be looked back upon as an exercise in branding. Premium brands from firms like BMW, Louis Vitton, Gillette and Gucci carry premium prices. Consumers often connect high quality with high prices. It obviously is not always the case, but it is more the rule than the exception.
The Lumia 900 may be priced so near the bottom end of high-end smartphones that AT&T customers see it as a competitor to mediocre mid-level phones. That makes it the rival of handsets that are not premium products. Nokia will enter the U.S. nearer to the low end of the smartphone market than it is to the top end. And, that could kill sales.
Douglas A. McIntyre
Credit Card Companies Are Doing Something Nuts
Credit card companies are at war. The biggest issuers are handing out free rewards and benefits to win the best customers.
It’s possible to find cards paying unlimited 1.5%, 2%, and even more today. That’s free money for qualified borrowers, and the type of thing that would be crazy to pass up. Those rewards can add up to thousands of dollars every year in free money, and include other benefits as well.
We’ve assembled some of the best credit cards for users today. Don’t miss these offers because they won’t be this good forever.
Flywheel Publishing has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Flywheel Publishing and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.
Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.
Latest from 24/7
Our expert who first called NVIDIA in 2009 is predicting 2025 will see a historic AI breakthrough.
You can follow him investing $500,000 of his own money on our top AI stocks for free.