Gary Krakow’s Take on Verizon’s Storm Pricing

So Gary Krakow of the Street.com, we all remember from his trackball bashing video.  Well he has some thoughts on Verizon’s pricing of the BlackBerry Storm.  He thinks that Verizon should follow Vodafone in giving the Storm away with new contracts.  He believes that $199 after a $50 mail in rebate is too high due to the fact that the iPhone sells for $199.

Doug Soltys of BlackBerry Cool disagrees with Krakow saying that for Verizon to give it away with new contracts is asking too much.  Read my thoughts after the jump.

I agree with Doug, it is asking a lot for a US carrier to give aanything away for free, short of a junker Nokia or something of that sort.  It’s a different market over here, we don’t get free stuff like Europe.  This is the land of the unlimited, unlimited cell phone plans, unlimited internet usage, and unlimited opportunity if you so have it.  Although everyone would love for hot new phones like the Bold and Storm to be free with new plans or even cheaper with upgrades, nobody expects it.  Yes, it would bring in a ton of revenue for Verizon, minus the price of the phone, but to what cost for them?  Carriers make butt loads of money, but they have to keep the revenue up, and if they gave away the Storm for a few months, it would take another few months just to recoup the prices that they could have charged.  I mean let’s take the Bold for example, that thing is 300 bucks up front with a new contract.  This seems like a lot for most non smartphone users, but are they not selling well?

In a perfect world, health care would be free, gas would be free, cell phones would be free, and some of the biggest banks in the world wouldn’t be crumbling like waffer.  Alas this isn’t a perfect world and we must make do with the way things are.  Besides, $250 up front for BlackBerry’s newest most cutting edge device, that’s touch screen too?  HELL YEAH!!! Who’s with me?

via BlackBerry Cool and TheStreet.com