Tech industry general discussion thread

related: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/...size-increasing-faster-than-broadband-speeds/






The downloadable versions of the Xbox games might have lower quality textures -- I've noticed that the quality of the textures in my xbox download of Dark Souls is significantly worse vs the PS3 version on disc that my friend has. Not sure if it's the download or the console, but it's noteworthy. I would much rather have the highest quality graphics, rather than the smallest possible download size.
 
I recommend you stop playing video games and work on moving to somewhere with useful Internet. Or read some books instead.

Cue the usual condescending elitist rhetoric which neither proves, nor resolves, anything. Capped internet is 100% more useful than no internet at all and to feign otherwise is a downright display of the most ostentatious ignorance. I simply raised my voice for those who wish to play a focal single player game and cannot simply because the overly stringent DRM policies used to "protect" the game are so permeated with tunnel vision coding decisions that eschew common sense and real world situations.

Open your eyes.
 
I have no idea how that relates to me point in the slightest.

If your internet is capped and you care about playing modern games, instead of whining about it, get a job (since you have lots of free time, since you can't play modern games) that lets you pay for proper internet.

Or play old offline games.

Just don't whine to me about your Luddite tendencies.
 
Annoyingly, it looks like regionally differentiated pricing is back on with Google's new Nexus 5. The price of the Nexus 4 in the UK was pretty much the same as in the US, when converted with market exchange rates into GBP, and adding on 20% VAT. However, the Nexus 5 is a good £40 more expensive than that: USD price = $350; fx rate = 1.61; VAT = 20%, so GBP price should be £260 -- but Google are selling it on their website for £300, a full 15% more expensive.

Where the hell that extra 15% comes from is a mystery to me, and always has been. But this is still slightly better than just flipping the $ sign into a £ sign and selling it at that price. I assume they just don't want to sell as many phones in the EU as they do in the US? Considering the off-contract market is far larger in the EU than the US, and the Nexus line has always been targeted at off-contract users, this seems bizarre. I can't believe they're doing it just to screw us over...
 
I sincerely doubt that UK ppl have more disposable income than US ppl. And the off-contract market being larger in the UK (relatively) should mean that they reduce the price, not increase it. More competition with other phones (as well as w/ contract phones), and also a bigger pie to grab market share from via competitive prices.
 
Yeah, it will sell worse at a higher price. But that isn't even the point. I see no reason why the profit maximising price should be higher in the UK than the US.
 
Because everyone else is doing it.
That doesn't make any sense. If they could make more profit by selling each unit cheaper then they should do that, irrespective of how other companies are priced. And, as I said, given that the market for off-contract phones is larger in the EU than the US, it would make even more sense to price lower than (a) their competitors in the EU and (b) they do themselves in the US, because there is a much bigger market to capture, and they will capture a much larger share of it with lower prices.
 
That doesn't make any sense. If they could make more profit by selling each unit cheaper then they should do that, irrespective of how other companies are priced. And, as I said, given that the market for off-contract phones is larger in the EU than the US, it would make even more sense to price lower than (a) their competitors in the EU and (b) they do themselves in the US, because there is a much bigger market to capture, and they will capture a much larger share of it with lower prices.

I'm saying that because other companies all price their products higher, consumers have fewer low cost alternatives, which could raise the profit maximizing point in the UK.

The solution is to make importing from the US cheap and easy for individuals.
 
Okay, so your point is actually that the market price, given the aggregate quantity sold, and the total size of the market, is higher in the EU than the US. But again, I see no reason for that, either. I see no reason for supply and demand to balance at a different point in the EU than the US. The two markets aren't so fundamentally different that it would make sense to price 15% higher in the EU than the US (or more like 30%, normally). I don't see how any data driven price discovery process could result in EU prices maximising profits at 15% higher than in the US.

This only seems to happen in electronics. Nothing else seems to suffer this problem. Indeed, the PPP conversion factor for the UK is 1.0...
 
If prices are 30% higher across the board for any phone, you don't see how the profit maximization point could be 15% higher for a given model?
No, I don't. I don't see how the profit maximising point for the industry in aggregate is 30% higher in the US than EU, and, given that, I don't accept that the profit max point for an individual business is 15% lower than this number, or 10% lower, or 20% lower, or in fact any % related to this number at all. It's a meaningless figure, because it simply isn't the point at which all companies in the industry in aggregate or individually maximise their profits. There is no cause that would affect supply and demand to the tune of 15% or 30% or any other number higher in the EU than the US, and I have literally never seen anyone present a plausible explanation for such a large disparity. The disparity doesn't exist in other industries, and I see no reason why it should exist in electronics.
 
Price points are largely relative to other products. People will buy phone A if it is 50 quid cheaper than phone B. This means that if two independent markets diverged at some point due to [stuff], they are quite likely to keep different prices. There are things keeping this in check (import by private persons, people not buying phones at all).

I believe something similar holds for clothing (jeans) between the US and Europe.
 
No, I don't. I don't see how the profit maximising point for the industry in aggregate is 30% higher in the US than EU, and, given that, I don't accept that the profit max point for an individual business is 15% lower than this number, or 10% lower, or 20% lower, or in fact any % related to this number at all. It's a meaningless figure, because it simply isn't the point at which all companies in the industry in aggregate or individually maximise their profits. There is no cause that would affect supply and demand to the tune of 15% or 30% or any other number higher in the EU than the US, and I have literally never seen anyone present a plausible explanation for such a large disparity. The disparity doesn't exist in other industries, and I see no reason why it should exist in electronics.

I'm not talking about the entire industry, I'm talking about a single phone.

Roughly: If every non-Nexus smart phone costs $800 instead of $600, when Google decides what to price the Nexus, there's no point in pricing it at $300, since the alternatives are so much more expensive, they might as well price it at $500 for the same pricing advantage in either situation.
 
It wouldn't be the same pricing advantage at all. It would be so much cheaper that, actually, a lot more people would buy at $300 than $500, to the point where the total profit is higher. These are people who ordinarily wouldn't buy an off-contract phone at $500 but would at $300. You (both) seem to assume that markets are a zero sum game, i.e. that there is a fixed number of customers and you're simply stealing customers from other companies if you price lower than they do. But that isn't true; when you price lower than your competitor, you're not just taking their customers, you're also attracting people who have never been customers of either company before, because, previously, prices were too high for them to buy at all.

In fact, there actually is a fixed number of customers: the population of the country/region that you're selling into, and those customers are choosing to buy from you or your competitors based on your price. It isn't just a case of "Person A either wants a phone or doesn't; if they do then they will pick between all companies in the industry; if they don't want a phone then they won't look at the price at all". It's a case of "Person A either wants a phone at a particular price or they don't; if they do then they will buy at that price; if they don't then they will not buy at that price". The demand curve describes the number of people Q willing to pay a price P for the product. When you price at a certain level, you're just picking a point on the demand curve to sell into: if you price at P you will attract Q customers. The company decides roughly how many customers Q it wants, and then prices at P to sell that many units. Google decides how many phones it wants to sell, and then sets a price that will achieve this sales target. Indeed, I would expect Google of all companies to want to sell as many phones as possible, to as many different people as possible, even if it ate into their margins.

And don't think I'm just talking about the ever shrinking number of people who don't currently have a smartphone or off-contract phone either. Phones are, to some extent, a consumable: people won't just replace them when they are broken, but will replace them when they fancy a new phone and are convinced that the difference in quality is worth the price of the phone. The cheaper the phone, the more frequently people will replace their phone. If even top end phones cost no more than $100, then people would replace them every year or even more than that. Pricing at a lower price, therefore, increases the number of people who would be willing to upgrade immediately, rather than waiting a bit for a better differential in quality (or until their phone is rendered unusable in some way). It increases the size of the market without actually introducing new people into the market at all. So, yah, I simply don't accept that the relative price has any meaningful relationship to the price at which an individual company maximises their profits.

Finally, I know you're not talking about the rest of the industry, but the fact is that there are other players in the industry, and they all individually insist on pricing higher in the EU than the US. Again, I haven't heard any plausible reason for any of this.
 
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