If you have been waiting for a long time pondering whether to upgrade your mobile phone, now might be the time to do the deed since handset vendors are flooding the market with special offers hoping to lighten people's Lunar New Year red envelopes.
Sophia Wang, a 30-year-old accountant at a local sushi-bar chain, has made do with her Nokia 8210, a bar-type model with a grey screen and no special gizmos for the last two years. Now she is eyeing a Panasonic X400, a clamshell phone with color screen, 300,000-pixel camera and which allows multimedia message transmission, for NT$10,300.
PHOTO COURTESY OF BENQ
"The handset is more affordable now. Local telecom carriers are offering the Panasonic X400 at about NT$8,000 and a new cell number," Wang said, adding that the cellphone will only cost a small portion of her year-end bonus.
Top of the Line
Nokia Oyj has special post Lunar New Year packages, and hopes to exploit the Valentine's Day market.
"As Lunar New Year is conventionally one of the hottest sales seasons of the year, most cellphone makers are offering special prices to boost sales in the local market. Nokia is no exception," said Jessica Chiu (
With Valentine's Day falling so close to the Lunar New Year holiday this year, handset makers including BenQ Corp (
Nokia now is offering users loyal to its products a free Swatch watch, if those users replace their old phone with one of the company's latest series of handsets featuring a variety of functions including shooting video clips, taking photos and reading news clips on the Internet.
The Nokia 7280 with a distinct lipstick-shaped handset, is designed to appeal to trendy female consumers, and contains such goodies as a digital music player, FM radio receiver, and zoom camera.
But, this kind of package does not come cheap. Those handsets, which also operate not just as a communication tool but also as a personal entertainment center, can cost as much as NT$20,000, which is more than half the average monthly wage (NT$38,000) last year.
But budget shoppers might pick their dream handsets from different telecom operators, if they don't mind the bother of changing phone numbers, according to Chiu.
In fact, handsets bundling a new service agreement are usually older models but much cheaper. For less than NT$8,000, consumers will be able to get a Sony Ericsson K700i, featuring strong entertainment functions including an MP3 player, FM radio receiver and 41Mb memory storage, enough for a CD. This is about 30 percent off the regular price.
If users prefer clamshell phones, a favorite among Asian consumers, they can choose Motorola Inc's V600 and V501 at similar discounts. Consumers can also spend much less, around NT$3,390, on Sony Ericsson's T630 camera phone. This model was a remake of the Japanese-Swedish company's previous hit, the T610, only with a much more vivid TFT-LCD screen and iPod-look white body.
Phones for Free
People who just want a cellphone to talk on can get a Nokia 2650 for NT$1,680, less than half the original retail price when the color-screen flip phone launched last quarter, bundling with Chunghwa Telecom Co's (中華電信) service.
But the big drawback of the Nokia 2560 is its monotonous ring tones. Impoverished individualists should set their phone to vibrate to avoid embarrassment.
Consumers living an austere life also can get an almost free phone if they sign up for a new number. Sign a service contract with Taiwan Cellular Corp (台灣大哥大) and you can have a sporty Motorola entry-level C155 bar phone, with a color screen and 400-minute battery life for voice calls, for just NT$1. Other options include the Nokia 2300 and BenQ M100.
And it is not only GSM telecom operators that are looking to exploit the market. Taiwan's only PHS (personal handyphone systems) telecom service provider, First International Telecom Corp (大眾電信), is joining the battle, celebrating the Year of the Rooster, by offering its first handset for free with a 2-year service agreement.
First International now has 800,000 subscribers, out of the nation's total 20 million mobile users, after expanding its coverage down to Taichung and Kaohsiung last year from Taipei.
For users of the low-radiation PHS systems, First International now offers 15-percent off for the dual-mode G1000 made by Japanese Sanyo Electric Co, bringing down the price to NT$13,500, from NT$15,900.
G1000 was a hit in Taiwan after its launch last February because of the convenience and lower voice tariffs.
The handset is the first handset allowing mobile users to remain connected by choosing to use a GSM system, if they are out of their PHS area. At the same time, users can pay half the prices GSM operators charged when calling from PHS numbers.
In addition to the G1000, First International also offers 10-percent off for the Sanyo J100 at NT$9,900 down from an original price of NT$10,900.
Market Conditions
But launching a crop of lower-priced mobile phones does not guarantee an encouraging sales performance in saturated markets like Taiwan, says Bruce Chiu (
As Taiwan's mobile penetration has already exceeded 100 percent, which means virtually everyone has a cellphone and some people have more than one, handset makers can only rely on demand for advanced handsets, Chiu said.
There is no urgent need for consumers to buy a new phone during the New Year holiday, Chiu said.
"Taiwanese consumers are smart. They won't buy until the best time as mobile phone makers and telecom operators are offering discount packages and new models all year around," Chiu said.
"We feel the sentiment is much weaker this year," Chiu said.
He expects handset sales may only have about 15-percent growth this year, compared to over 20 percent in the past.
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