What do you do when one of your devices fails to meet sales targets? You take drastic measures, that’s what. Take a look at action camera maker GoPro’s dramatic slashing of the GoPro Hero4 Session’s price, effectively halving its original USD400 price tag. It was simply too expensive for what it did and how it stacked up against GoPro’s own line, what more the competition.
BlackBerry CEO John Chen apparently has the same idea because he recently said that the company’s latest (and only) Android smartphone, the PRIV, will be receiving a price cut next year. So, early PRIV adopters…oops?
When everyone found out that the slider device would see an official launch in Malaysia, everyone began speculating on a price for BlackBerry’s flagship device. Simply converting its exorbitant American pricing of USD699 to our frankly depressing Ringgit, yielded a figure close to RM3,000 which caused some distress among the smartphone community.
Then we found out that the PRIV would be sold at RM3,559 and everyone went nuts. Why would anyone ever pay that much money for a smartphone?
Privilege, BlackBerry says. It was the only BlackBerry device running Android…which made it just another Android smartphone, of which we have plenty and plenty that are better. Privacy, they added. It was supposed to be Android’s state-of-the-art device in terms of security…but it doesn’t even have a fingerprint sensor. I think we can start to see why this device didn’t do as well as they wanted it to.
To make matters worse, the smartphone didn’t feel like it was RM1,000 more premium than any of the other Android flagships. Performance then? Nope, it is smooth, but so is every other flagship device. Aha! The PRIV brought BlackBerry’s physical keyboard over, a big plus point when it comes to BlackBerry phones! Uh, nope. Based on our hands-on with the device at the launch event, the keyboard felt a little too soft and was nowhere near as satisfying to type on as older BlackBerry phones.
It seems then that the Hail Mary phone that was supposed to be the saviour for the Waterloo-based company, would instead end up being the final nail in its coffin. Seems like dire straits for John Chen, so he recently made an announcement that the device would receive a price cut around the time of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which will be held from February 22 to 25.
Due to the obvious fact that the other smartphone manufacturers would be releasing new devices, John Chen said that the PRIV would receive a “mid-life kicker” in addition to its price cut to hopefully remain competitive in the free market. He seems optimistic enough though, since he said that if the PRIV performs well, they will launch an affordable mid-range device. John, maybe you should start with that next time.
While we don’t think that they would halve the price the PRIV, we do hope that it receives a significant enough price cut to remain competitive. The thing is, even if they cut RM1,000 off its price, would you buy the PRIV over, say, a Samsung Galaxy Note5 or a Nexus 6P? Do, let us know in the comments below because we know we wouldn’t.
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