Soonr Blog

News hit today that AT&T will begin selling iPhones without contracts for $599 and $699 respectively. Now, if I bought an iPhone without a contract to AT&T, that would effectively give me a great wifi workstation in a miniature form factor.

Hmm, that sounds like a netbook to me! But wait, the last Netbook I bought cost $300 and it had a 1024×600 screen, 1G RAM, 160G harddrive, full keyboard and Windows XP included! Seems like you have to pay a huge premium for an iPhone without subsidy!

So now the price of phones have reached the realm of stuff that just doesn’t make any sense at all. What other items fit this category?

Bottled water:
Last time I checked into a hotel, there was a bottle of water in the mini-fridge for $4. A soda cost $2.50. What gives?

Ringtones:
I can pay $1.99 for a 5 second ringtone of my favorite song, or I can pay $0.99 (0.79 on Amazon) for the entire song!

TV Shows:
I can log onto Hulu.com and watch my favorite shows for FREE, or I can buy them on iTunes for $1.99.

Have we all gone start raving mad? Why would I pay more for something that should be less? I’ll tell you what it is…convenience. We are all willing to pay for something where we don’t have to do the work. It’s a pain to track down the TV show you want and transcode it to the format for your player. Making a 5 second ringtone out of your 4 minute song takes time to do! I don’t want to walk down to the market for a bottle of water when I can get it in my room. I want an internet station in my pocket (iPhone) instead of the inconvenience of schlepping around a Netbook.

So you see, all these products are really just services that we pay for. As we create our offerings here are Soonr, we always keep in mind that you could probably find some of the features from someone else, but we will make it all integrated and much more convenient to use. That’s why we will save you time, make you more productive, and you just might be willing to pay for it. This is what software as a service is all about.