Price wars intensify in prepaid
Dish’s Boost Mobile prepaid brand has launched a new rate plan targeting switchers. The prepaid MVNO is offering an online-only 5GB data plan with 4G and 5G speeds for only $5/month. Users will be throttled to 2G speeds once reaching their 5GB allotment. The catch is that the promotional pricing is valid for only three months, and users will be required to pay $45/month for the same plan once the promotional period is over.
Similarly, the Ryan Reynolds-backed MVNO, Mint Mobile, has launched new commercials promoting its entire plan selection including an unlimited plan for $15/month. Mint’s regular rate plans normally range between $15 (4GB data) and $30 (Unlimited data) when paid upfront for the whole year. The $30 Unlimited plan is now offered for $15/month for three months. Customers will then pay the regular price ($40/month for a 3-month plan, $35/month for a six-month plan, or $30/month for a 12-month plan).
The NPD Take:
- Boost Mobile has been steadily losing subscribers to rivals since Dish’s takeover from Sprint, and the MVNO’s efforts in offsetting the losses by a wave of newcomers may not go as planned as the new plan’s post-promotion pricing is uncompetitive even by the postpaid standards.
- Mint Mobile’s new campaign gives customers an extra month to month-and-a-half of free service (depending on their rate plan period), and it should help Mint Mobile further grow its base following its successful retail expansion at Target and Best Buy. The timing of Mint Mobile’s campaign is also spot-on considering postpaid carriers’ inflation-driven price hikes, though if the rumors are right, the aggressive campaign is likely a result of an exit plan that aims for maximum valuation based on subscriber base size.
New start-up Nothing launches its first phone
Carl Pei, the co-founder of OnePlus who left OnePlus to launch his “Nothing” start-up, had initially teased the market with a transparent-design earbud. The Ear 1 earbuds came with active noise cancellation (ANC), retailed for $99 and sold over 600K units globally in almost no time. Last week, Nothing unwrapped its much-awaited new phone, the Nothing Phone 1, which is now available for pre-order. The phone boasts mid-tier specs, such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7-series chipset, but clearly stands out with its design and user interface, dubbed the Glyph.
The Nothing Phone 1’s back cover, like the casing of the Ear 1, is transparent and it uses 900 LEDs that light up in various customizable ways for tasks and notifications such as battery charging bar progress, light notification while video recording, or ringtone/SMS animations. The phone will commercially debut on July 12, but Nothing has already begun taking pre-orders (which has already reached 144K as of today according to the live tracker on Nothing’s website despite lack of any pricing information) for a fee of around $20. Bad news for the US domestic market, however, as Nothing does not plan to offer the new phone here due to a lack of spectrum support.
The NPD Take:
- While the U.S. is out of the launch market list for the Nothing Phone 1, there is still a lot to get excited about given the company’s unique approach to prioritizing differentiation. Carl Pei and the team are using creative brand marketing tactics similar to those seen during the early years of the OnePlus, and the brand has already gotten tremendous recognition despite the lack of a commercial product.
- The Android space is very competitive and new phone innovations, such as Android founder Andy Rubin’s Essential brand (whose IP is now owned by Nothing) have shown that it is not that easy to differentiate with a limited scale and fight the industry giants. While there is no information on pricing for the Nothing Phone 1, its spec sheet and learned experiences such as Essential’s failure due to flagship-level pricing suggest that pricing will be in the sub-$600 range, giving Nothing a chance to make a dent.