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Posts Tagged ‘Tiers’

Google lowers Nexus One upgrade price to $279, issues $100 refund to early upgraders

Good news, earthlings! Apparently Google’s taken all the complaints about Nexus One upgrade pricing to heart, because it’s giving $100 rebates to current T-Mobile subscribers who paid $379 for the HTC-built handset — and it says it’ll be widening the net and offering upgrades to even more current T-Mo subs, although we still don’t know how that’s determined. That means the new Nexus One pricing tiers break down like this: $529 unlocked, $279 upgrade for (some) current T-Mo subs, and $179 on a new 2-year contract. Handshakes all around. Now, let’s fix up family plan activations and that crazy double ETF, shall we?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Google lowers Nexus One upgrade price to $279, issues $100 refund to early upgraders originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Simon & Schuster imposing four-month delay on e-book versions of major upcoming releases
After hardcover and before paperback. In Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy’s mind, this is when we as consumers should be expecting the digital copies of their favorite page turners to come out. Putting money where its mouth is, so to speak, the company has announced that for around 35 of its major releases coming early next year, the e-book iterations won’t be out until four months after the physical releases. Seeing as hardcovers can debut at $27 while their digital equivalents can run $10 or less, Reidy notes one of the driving motivations behind this move is to curb consumer expectations that a new novel is worth only one Alexander Hamilton. It’s a historically valid concern, especially when you consider how iTunes taught us that songs are only worth $1 apiece, but in the long-term, we don’t expect this delay-on-digital trend to stay afloat. The e-book business is growing, and that delay is too artificial for its own good — at some point, the argument’s going to have to shift back to day-and-date pricing tiers. We’ll be very interested to see just how this paper-borne release gap pans out from a sales standpoint.

Simon & Schuster imposing four-month delay on e-book versions of major upcoming releases originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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T-Mobile officially unveils $99 Even More, $79 Even More Plus plans and equipment installment option

Right on schedule with the whispers, T-Mobile lifted the veil off of its new price plan tier structure, Even More and Even More Plus, and from the looks of it all those leaks were pretty much spot-on. The traditional Even More plan is a two-year commitment and discounted phone, with unlimited individual prices starting at $59 per month and going up to $99 if you want unlimited messaging and text, too. Even More Plus scrapes the device discount but offers unlimited individual prices at $49 for voice / $79 for everything. It looks like the only major differentiator is the subsidized handset, but here’s where the numbers don’t add up: even with the steep $350 discount on myTouch 3G, factoring in that $20 premium would pay for the phone during the 18th month, leaving six months and $120 of extra payments left that have no obvious justification to us. Additionally the FlexPay / equipment installment plan is now available, letting you break up the cost of your phone into interest-free monthly bills. It seems Even More’s subsidized phones are offered over four installments (e.g. $37 per month for the $150 MyTouch 3G) while Even More Plus’ is two installments (e.g. $25 per month for the same device at the $500 full price). Our initial takeaway from the price tiers is that T-Mobile is doing what it can to drive its consumers away from the traditional and over to the non-traditional (for US, at least) Even More Plus plan, but hey, we’re not gonna argue over a beneficial contract-free plan, even if monthly phone payments keep us paying the company for at least 20 months. So T-Mo, any other Project Dark surprises in the cards? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Filed under: Cellphones

T-Mobile officially unveils $99 Even More, $79 Even More Plus plans and equipment installment option originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PaaS the Java: VMware’s middleware buy is a cloud play

VMware announced this week that it has signed an agreement to acquire SpringSource, the company behind the open source Spring and Grails frameworks. The $362 million acquisition raises some puzzling questions, like why would a virtualization company want to acquire a Java middleware vendor? According to VMware, this deal is a key part of the company’s cloud strategy and will lay the foundation for delivering the value of “platform-as-a-service” (PaaS) solutions.

Virtualization and cloud computing are all about decoupling software from the underlying hardware. This can significantly boost flexibility and resource utilization, but it obviously creates management and deployment challenges. The PaaS model is emerging as one potential solution to these problems. PaaS vendors deliver the bottom two tiers of the three-tier cloud stack (infrastructure, platform, applications), and this includes software development frameworks, application infrastructure, and even programming tools. This approach largely ameliorates the difficulties of management and deployment because those functions become a seamlessly integrated part of the stack. Some prominent real-world examples of PaaS are Force.com and Google’s AppEngine.

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