A thought about the pricing of the Note III

Posted by HarshilShah on January 21, 2013 08:18 am 8

If the rumors and general Samsung tradition are to be believed, the Samsung Galaxy Note III will be larger than the Note II. Many sources cite 6.3" as the size of the upcoming behemoth.

If not the original Note and the Note II, that surely creates a remarkable blur between what a phone is and what a tablet is.

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The Note - Caught between two lives. Reminds me of that Example song

The differences are becoming smaller by the release. The Galaxy S series went from 4 to 4.3 to 4.8 inches. The already huge Note went from 5.3 to 5.5 inches. We have reached the point where a tablet might soon be just a slightly larger phone (with slightly being the keyword).

But there is a strange paradigm up ahead in the immediate future now.

Smartphones, or rather superphones, as their power now exceeds by far what one sets as the baseline for a phone to be called "smart", such as the Galaxy SIII, Note II, HTC One X+ and so on and so forth all command high prices. You may not realize this living in a mainly contract based region, but these devices cost a small fortune to obtain when sold unlocked.

Enter tablets. "Mini" tablets, such as the Nexus 7, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 and quite a few more, but particularly the Nexus 7 spurred market interest in tablets last year. Even Apple joined the game with the iPad mini. These mini tablets are very similar to the aforementioned superphones. They have similar processors, OSes and pretty much everything else. They are, on paper, magnified smartphones.

But among the myriad similarities, a stark contrast remains. The price. Whereas most superphones sell for about a couple of hundred dollars more than a half grand at launch, mini tablets often sell for a similar amount under. The difference being only two things: Size and cellular components.

So, miniaturizing a product costs money in the engineering and production departments.

But what happens when you don't miniaturize it completely, Even the iPad mini, much criticized for its high selling price sells for about half of what the aforementioned superphones did at launch.

It seems inevitable now.With the Note III, I expect the miniaturization costs to shrink almost to the point of negligence.

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Is the Note joining the club this year?

Despite all of the prowess it should possess, the Note III should, in my opinion, not be priced too far away from the Nexus 7 successor, rumored to possess similar, if not the exact same raw power.

I see no sense it it being priced at, say, $700. Flat $600 might just be the limit of sensible pricing for it.

What does the Army feel about the Note III's pricing? Will it be comparable to that of the SIV? Or will be under the $500 barrier?