Vendors want to have their cake and eat it. They are no longer happy with a one-time sale, they want a continuous revenue stream. I have absolutely no qualms about buying "subsidized" devices and liberating them. I am not going to pay five times the price of a "smart TV" for a commercial display with worse specs when I can buy the consumer version and not connect it to the Internet or root it.
I think this is bad for customers. If every vendor does this, and regulators don't set regulations that balance the interests of companies with the interests of customers, than the only option people have are things like this.
What exactly is the subsidy here?
Is it that they plan to meet a bulk of their profit target after the sale, instead of frontloading the profit. The subsidy can be considered a 1000 dollars on a 200 dollar device if their target price is 1200 dollars.
It is only really subsidized if the device is actually sold below cost of BOM & essential software needed minus bloat. I'm skeptical that they are giving away hardware below cost based on potential profits.
And with Amazon and other online shopping, consumer price sensitivity, and the ability to act on it, pressure is at an all-time high. There's a huge race to the bottom for all sorts of consumer goods.
Let's say total cost of manufacturing and distribution and service for the manufacturer is $50. Given two functionally identical products: if you were a layperson consumer, would you buy the product that costs 80 or would you buy the product that costs 100?
If the manufacturer can extract $20 of ad revenue from you, and you make the cheaper purchase up front, then it's win/win for the consumer (spent less), and the manufacturer (able to offer a lower price option and thus hopefully higher sales).
Well, "win/win" in a sense, I suppose.
I don't see the difference. How would you reduce their influence without harming them?
There is no competition in the space anymore. Not on that. You either get crudded-up devices or a panel that doesn’t have the fundamental AV capabilities required of a living room TV.
Who pays for those ads/tracking/etc... companies that want to sell stuff to the consumer. Congratulations, subsidization just introduced more middlemen which extract more profit from the consumer.
The simpler things can be, the cheaper things can be.
The goal is to do harm to anti-consumer companies. Buying their (subsidized) hardware, and then breaking their lock-in so you and others aren't shown ads or forced to pay useless subscriptions, harms the company.
Only if you can guarantee that the vendor is going to remain in business forever, and provide service and support for the product forever.
Neither of those things happen. Ever.
If the manufacturer subsidizes the hardware purchase, that loss is realized at hardware purchase time.
Years ago, this was true. But today, selling your personal information isn't a loss leader. It's additional profit on top of the profit from the product.