T-Mobile Germany launches Lumia 800 – With carrier billing!
Here’s an intersting piece of information, or atleast it is if you haven’t been a close Nokia follower. T-Mobile Germany has just announced the availability of the Lumia 800. In itself impressive by Nokia standards since we have grown used to months between announcement and carrier availability, but that’s in the past.
The key take-away from T-Mobile’s news is that they have carrier billing enabled for Marketplace purchases. While it may seem as a little thing, this is actually pretty huge. Firstly it makes the transition from Symbian (or Nokia in general) to Windows Phone much easier since you don’t need a credit card anymore to be able to buy stuff on the Marketplace. Secondly it makes it far easier for first time smartphone users to be able to buy apps. And thirdly, this benefits developers as well. The threshold for buying apps is lowered and thus the potential revenue for a paid app ‘could’ increase.
Most Symbian users have grown accustomed to carrier billing and it is one less thing to worry about now that Nokia’s WP solution can provide the same for atleast one carrier right now. No word yet on if carrier billing is a Nokia exclusive though.
It has been a bit of hurdle for myself as well in making the jump to Windows Phone, the whole credit card thing required me to get one for the sole purpose of downloading apps. Hopefully the carrier billing thing will expand rapidly to other countries.
Thanks mprince for bringing it to my attention again!
Category: Nokia
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So Nokia has given up operating systems profits and control to MS. NFC and billing to the carriers. Remember Nokia makes nothing from App sales on the WP7 platform.
What concessions did Nokia get from MS? It seems very few if any.
Carriers will always meddle and try to break the user experience. Complain all you like abaout Apple but you can buy an Iphone on all networks and get the same apps and experience and billing simplicity.
Nokia will soon become another box shifter figting the horde from Korea and China. It’s not a winning strategy.
Uhm, you do know that carrier billing has always been available on Symbian as well as is implied in the post as well?
It’s just an easy way for end users to pay for their apps. The revenue will still go to Nokia and the developers of the apps, although I don’t know how this will go with the Marketplace being MS controlled. Nokia said a while back that they would have their own section inside of the Marketplace just like HTC etc. do, but how this will work I don’t know.
With operator billing the developer pays two commissions one to the operator and the other to Nokia – they end up with 50% or less of their app sale price.
As to having your own section inside the MS Marketplace I have an LG E900 which has a separate LG section but all apps are free.
If Nokia wants to charge for these apps then MS will still take their cut.
Nokia has lost control of their user to the operator and MS.
Are you sure about the “50% or less”? IIRC its much lower in Nokia Store even with carrier billing.
And as said, in markets like Germany the developer would still be better off as the credit card penetration rate is low.
It is simply in line with how Nokia Symbian worked. Not an MS request.
No change.
As Harangue said, carrier billing has been one of Nokia’s big selling points on Symbian for a long time. Btw, Germany has a very low credit card penetration rate so this is a major advantage to Nokia in Germany.
“Remember Nokia makes nothing from App sales on the WP7 platform. What concessions did Nokia get from MS? It seems very few if any.”
Why do you assume Nokia is not getting anything from the revenues of app sales on Nokia devices, in particular where Nokia is bringing to the table carrier billing errangements? In fact, would it seem more likely that they will, that that they won’t? Oh I get it, you have the Nokia-MS contract sitting on your desk?
Nokia got paid $1 billion up front as part of the deal. By the time Microsoft breaks even Nokia will have sold a minimum of 60 million Windows Phone handsets, probably closer to 120 million given the licensing fees, and at that point Nokia’s making a lot of profit just from handset sales.
Carrier billing increases convenience for the user, which means more developers get paid, which means more developers come to the platform, which means Windows Phone is more attractive, and therefore Nokia’s Windows Phones are more attractive. Since Nokia has chosen to go with Windows Phone, they benefit from the whole ecosystem getting better.
And Symbian shows they don’t want to hog everything, that’s why Samsung and Sony Ericsson ditched it and went for Android instead.
How much have they lost because of the deal? Their shares have lost like 60% value, their market share and sales have dropped, and remember the Q2 results? Nokia was actually losing money.
I heard somewhere that Nokia had lost billions due to the deal so far. (and note the so far thing)
I will call him Cyclops from now on for his one eyed determination to drive Nokia shareholder value into the ground.
+1
Cool story bro.
Just tried it in a german O2 store. The phones build quality is – as its display – superb. And Windows Phone was pretty responsive, a pleasure to use it.
Too sad it comes without sd-memory and a bad cam. For me it would be a downgrade to my N8. So I guess I’ll wait for the next gen of Nokia Windows Phones…
There isn’t anything that really can compare to N8, but to say it’s a bad cam..? Go try other that pricepoint WP7 devices
Sure, you might be right dude. But i meant in comparison to the N8 … just to make that clear
The camera is the one thing that I find disappointing as well. Guess that’s what you get when you have had an N8.
They do need to do some updating to the camera SW though, it seems just so wrong that HTC can do better than Nokia in the camera department.
Next gen Nokia Windows Phones will also get penta-band back. For people who haven’t used Nokias before, the Lumia 800 and 710 are a good intro to Windows Phone, but for past Nokia users it doesn’t hurt to wait for the real flagships to get released.
T-Mobile offers the same for Android.
It limited to t-mobile customers / smartphones. So it is in fact a bigger limitation than having to use a credit card. Not at all comparable to Symbian carrier billing.
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