24 Month "Upgrades" from VZW and ATT

[spotmeterf64]

Now that AT&T and VZW have shown their cards, do you think Sprint will follow and kill the well-loved 20 month upgrade cycle in favor of no upgrading before contract expiration?

 

I never thought we'd see the day that upgrades would go away, honestly. The biggest gotcha in wireless has always been the fact that you could get a new phone before your contract was up, taunting you with a new phone 12, 6, or 4 months before you could leave without penalty. Especially in the days of smartphones when our phones are obsolete almost as soon as they're released, I think 2 years is just too long to be tied down to the same phone. Of course, you can always buy a new phone whenever you want, at full price. Who really does that regularly though, other than S4GRU members? Device subsidies are often touted as the reason we're losing our upgrades, but I think that's less of a factor than we're led to believe. Does anyone really believe that an S4 or One costs AT&T or Sprint $650? I do believe that Apple charges the most possible for their phones, maybe even full MSRP, because they can. Most Android phones don't even get upgrade support for 2 years from device release; just ask Photon owners, and iPhones are intentionally hobbled in later iOS releases to encourage upgrading. There's no technical reason why the iPhone 4 can't have turn-by-turn navigation in the Apple Maps app or FaceTime over 3G, for example.

 

Back in 2010, I would have said absolutely no way would upgrades go to 24 months. Remember, we still had the wonderful Sprint Premier program with yearly upgrades and a significant 25% off accessory discount. But today, I'm not so sure. What do you think? I certainly hope that Sprint holds to the 20 month upgrade cycle.

[MacinJosh]

Sprint just reduced their upgrade program from 22 months to 20 months. I'm pretty sure they will keep it that way for a while.

 

 

Sent from Josh's iPhone 5 using Tapatalk 2

[koiulpoi]

I honestly hope not. Your average consumer is confused enough as it is, what with the aforementioned Premier program being done away with. As it stands, it now makes Sprint "better" than the Duopololy.

 

I actually got to say this to a customer the other day...

 

Customer: "If you don't give me an early upgrade, I'm cancelling and going to Verizon."

Me: "Before you do that, you should know that both Verizon and AT&T changed their upgrade policy to a full 24 months, so you'd be walking in to a worse situation."

[Rukin1]

See my thing is, new phones are always being released, they are becoming better and better and more advanced. I still have a upgrade available to use lol. I was gonna get the GS4, But i'm gonna wait till the note 3 comes out(which will/should support lte800) or get the gs4 when 800lte is supported.

[JeffDTD]

Verizon is posturing in order to test willingness to "finance" a new device ON TOP of the existing rates. ATT? Just copycatting.

 

Sent from my Note II. Its so big.

 

 

[halcyoncmdr]

Does anyone really believe that an S4 or One costs AT&T or Sprint $650? I do believe that Apple charges the most possible for their phones, maybe even full MSRP, because they can.

 

Actually the retail price for most of the phones is pretty close to the cost the carrier has. There is a small profit, but you're talking maybe 5% when you get to the high-end smartphones. Apple's device costs to the carrier are nearly identical to the MSRP retail price, and Apple makes a huge profit on it if you look up how much it costs to actually make an iPhone (~$238 for an iPhone 5 64GB, retail price for that model is $850).

 

http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPhone5-Carries-%24199-BOM-Virtual-Teardown-Reveals.aspx

[SpenceSouth]

I loved it when Sprint had their one year upgrades.  I got one use out of it by jumping from my HTC Hero to Samsung Epic.  I know it must've been a massive money trap so it was no surprise when they cut that perk.