Because I get money if you do!

I'm always right, remember that!

Good grief! How is this news at all? How much do you think the £500+ (when it came out) Nokia N95 8GB cost to produce? Try buying one SIM free for less than £400 even today. Thats £400, not £279. But you don't exactly see continuous articles written against Nokia and its product.

Get a grip people!

Paris, because this stuff is equally mindless.

What is more interesting here is just how important volume is in driving down cost and how quickly this now happens with 'blockbuster' products like the iPhone. Nokia lead the industry with 40% of the global mobile pie and a development and purchasing strategy that leverages its scale to generate healthy margins from its myriad products, not just the best sellers. But ‘owning’ the device and its platform is now even more important as new mobile services they are developing depend on this to function as designed. How long will it be before not just operators but Apple and Nokia subsidise handsets in order to achieve volume sales and therefore a viable market for their future applications and services?

You have to remember that getting the things from China to <subject home country here> also costs money. As does delivering them to each local vendor in <subject home town here>.

And retailers also get a cut too.

Thus a $200 RRP sounds fine, assuming that's for an unlocked/non-contract phone.

"But ‘owning’ the device and its platform is now even more important as new mobile services they are developing depend on this to function as designed."

Agreed, look at RIM. But where does this leave WM? When you see what Apple are doing with MobileMe, it reminds you that Microsoft could have done this ages ago, they had all the tools, they perhaps just lacked the vision?

Is El Reg's standard of journalism slipping that much that it has resorted to stating the bleedin' obvious.

First rule of business, keep the cost of providing the service or manufacturing the product as low as poss and sell it for as much as the market will stand, difference between the two is called the MARGIN!

Read another obvious story today (which did not have a comments section, hmmm wornder why) that stated that mobile ops had to buy Apple hardware and software to suppot the Apple iPhone and that this gave Apple the opportunity to mine the data if they wanted to, if the service is proprietory you have to have the kit to support it and Apple being Apple, will no doubt exploit this position somehow, they are becoming worse than Microsoft.

But what next, Reg reveals that trees are Green?