Yak":k7hxej0x said:
All weasel stuff. P*ss on their whole tribe.
With the calculated destruction of manufacturing/self-sufficiency via the Central Banking-Congressional-Judicial alliance, the result was that, increasingly, legitimate profit from offering goods and services disappeared.
What was left to exploit was the people themselves. So, using the "intellectual property" smokescreen, they created situations like this one.
Can you imagine Colt trying, in 1873, to get a law passed that it, and it alone, had the right to manufacture .45 bullets for their pistols ? And to charge 10 times the going rate on that basis ?
Or Henry Ford trying to patent the specific spark plug configuration that would work in his autos ?
Or Spaulding getting a patent on the baseball ?
But that's exactly what you're seeing here. Same scam as making desktop copiers & selling them at a loss because it's now ILLEGAL for anyone but them to make ink cartridges (priced an order of magnitude beyond "profitable") that work in them.
A pox on their house.
:face:
Mmm... this isn't right. No one has a monopoly on any phone. Most phones are made for multiple carriers with different antennas in them so they can operate on the network they're designed for. Occasionally a cellular provider and a phone manufacturer will strike a deal and a phone will be exclusive with one carrier, but that doesn't provide a corner on the smartphone market at large. Phones that get sold through Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc that are attached to contracts shouldn't be allowed to be transferred to other carriers until the contract is over. The contract is legally binding and customers get a steep discount on the phones when they sign one.
My day job is as a Store Manager for Verizon in Chicago. I can tell you that, in fact, the devices do actually cost retailers close to the "full retail cost" but retailers are then paid a subsidy when they sell a device at a discount. For example, the cost to my retailer is $650 for an iPhone. A customer can purchase that phone at $700, with a $50 profit to the retailer, or they can sign a 2 year contract which drops the price of the iPhone 5 to $200. Verizon pays the retailer the difference, plus a chunk more than $50 for a job well done. You can complain about the cost of manufacturing vs the price you pay, but the fact is that these devices are in high demand and are highly sophisticated. As such, they command a high price, even if they aren't incredibly expensive to make.
BTW, retail costs will always be relative to manufacturing costs. What do you think the cost of manufacturing a pipe cleaner is? I betcha it's a few pennies per cleaner at the most, yet we pay $2 to $5 for a pack of them. That's an enormous profit on every cleaner in that bundle. Same applies for smart phones. It costs much more than pennies to make one so the price a consumer pays will naturally be higher than for a pack of cleaners, for example.
I hear complaints like these a lot but here are the facts, boys. When cell phones first came out en mass, simple phones (phone calls, texting, and, later, cameras) were a little more expensive, but then came a short period where it was easy to always get a free phone with an upgrade. Well that upgrade was still a 2 year contract which discounted those phones from $200+ to free. The system hasn't changed but the devices have. A smart phone is a computer in your pocket that has constant internet access all over the US and many other countries. We can surf the web, get turn by turn directions from satellites using an online database of free maps created by Google, we can make a
video call to friends and family, we can still make phone calls and send texts, take pictures, take HD video, work on word, excel, and powerpoint documents, interact quickly through forum apps and other social media applications, the list goes on endlessly. These devices are more versatile and powerful than any laptop I've ever owned. Most of the ones we sell in my store are more powerful than my Girlfriend's gaming computer that she runs Guild Wars 2 on at top performance, seamlessly. Not only are these devices computers, they are MP3 players, navigation devices, and video cameras. I don't think it's too much to ask for committed loyalty for 2 years so people can afford a device like this.
A customer signs a legally binding 2 year contract in order to get a steep discount on a device. If they break that contract, unlock their phone, and take it to another carrier, they are committing fraud by breaking a legal agreement. This is not small potatoes guys.
Yak, what you describe above sounds to me like, and you used this word, patenting. If Colt had invented the .45 bullet and patented it, then hell yeah it is and should be illegal for others to manufacture or sell that bullet without some sort of agreement with Colt.
In short, PB and Bowman are right.
