The NEW Samsung Galaxy Tab
Vodafone have made a very strange pricing decision in their pricing plans for the Samsung Galaxy Tab, almost willing you with an invisible hand to pick one of their mid tier plans by rubbishing their top tier plan so that you pick the plan price points below it.
How? It is due to the fact the plan pricing increments don’t follow the usual pricing approach of giving you more data per dollar when you commit to a more expensive plan.
A typical broadband plan might start by offering you 2GB of data for $20 per month ($10 per 1GB). This is usually the broadband provider’s worst pricing point in terms of value as it is the cheapest plan.
Then for $40 per month they might offer you 80GB, which is now an effective rate of $.50 per GB, far better value than the cheaper plan. It is double the price you pay which is 2x increase, but they give you a 40x increase in data per month.
So the general rule is simple, the more you spend per month, the more that is thrown in. We’re all probably used to that type of pricing in many product categories. This is illustrated below when you look at Telstra’s fixed line broadband pricing.
But, be prepared for something different with Vodafone on their new Samsung Galaxy Tab plans.
Yet, with the Vodafone Galaxy Tab plans, the pricing model starts normally…on the first plan for $15 per month you pay $15 for the first 1.5GB. This is of course the least competitive in terms a $ per GB rate as per the pricing you’d expect.
This is then followed by a big value increase in the next tier at $29 per month where they give you 10GB per month.
Then things get strange. When you jump from $29 per month to $39 per month, the value increase slows down again, and by the $49, the extra value has slowed to a crawl.
The amount you pay per GB actually increases the more you spend…
What makes this strange is that the pricing of the Galaxy Tab is the same across all 3 plans from $29 to $49 so you are not subsidizing the device.
It is clear that the $29 per month plan offers way better value than the next two plans as this offers the best $ per GB value of all the plans, something that you would not expect in the middle pricing tier as this honour is usually reserved for the top pricing tier.
When you jump plans from $39 for 14GB, to $49 for 16GB it means that you only get 2GB more per month, but you pay $10 for the final 2GB (which equates to $5 per GB those last two GBs).
So if you’re after the Galaxy Tab on Vodafone, the message is clear…
The $29 plan offers the best value proposition of all the plans and it looks like they want you to pick this one!
If you do need more than 10GB per month, pick the $39 plan for the 14GB and not the $49 plan for 16GB as the final 2GB jump from 14GB to 16GB will cost you $5 per GB per month
Compare the plans from Optus and Vodafone on the Galaxy Tab