Kathy Stielsa

Posts Tagged ‘mobile phone’

Over the last few years cell phone costs have come down, whilst the price of mobile contracts offered by the mobile network providers has remained mostly unchanged (though you do get more free airtime that said, you are able to get more inclusive minutes than you once did). So, the value of a handset is proportionally less than it used to be when compared alongside the overall cost of a mobile phone contract. In the past cell phone retailers would provide free handsets by way of an incentive for consumers to take out a contract. In the past some retailers would even charge for the handset on top of the cost of the contract. Mobile phones were, at that time very expensive, and often considered a premium product or status symbol. Today with increasingly widespread use and resulting economies of scale even the top cell phones are quite cheap.

This presents something of a dilemma for mobile phone retailers who try to to market mobile phone deals in terms of incentives offered to their customers. The result has been the launch of a number of different deals with incentives, such as cell phones with a free broadband dongle, cell phones with free televisions, mobile phones including instant cash back, and even mobile phones with free laptops.

televisions are one of the more recent additions to the line up of gifts available with mobile phones. Just a two or three years back, the idea of being able to obtain a free 26″ television free with a mobile phone would have been ridiculous. But, we have seen sizeable changes in the market for television sets that have made this possible.

Television Technology has transformed dramatically during the last one or two years with the dominance of HD and LCD television sets, and the move toward digital transmission. The result is that large numbers of consumers have updated their old television sets. Increases in sales have caused rapid cost reductions of LCD television sets, which were extremely costly when they were first released.

This upsurge in sales of new TVs, along with their relatively low price makes them a great incentive for prospective cellular phone customers. There are a lot of people considering changing their television for a more recent model. If some of these people are also in the market for a new cellular telephone and notices one of these mobile phone free television incentives they can be a significant incentive to buy.

As with any mobile phone deal, you need to understand the actual price of what you are getting, so, compare the value of other mobile phone free tv offers to ensure the value of the tv you are being offered is comparable to the value of other freebies available. In particular check out the automatic cash back deals available at the time, then see how much you can get a television for from a cheap online retailer. It may be the case that you could actually get a better offer by taking cashback from the store and buying the tv yourself.