Verizon Wireless really screwed up the Samsung Tab with pricing and policy
I've been playing with a Samsung Tab from Verizon Wireless since November 11th. I will share my impressions of the device in the coming days but in the interim, I wanted to let the world know about how crazy Verizon Wireless …
Context & Ripple Effects
Samsung's Galaxy Tab arrived as the first credible challenger to Apple's iPad — reviewers confirmed its significance even while panning the hardware as a "pocketable train wreck", and its Flash support was positioned as the wedge against the iPad. What was never in dispute was the device; what varied wildly was how each carrier chose to sell it.
That variance is the story here. T-Mobile launched the Tab at $400 on contract earlier this month, while Verizon Wireless — which landed the device back in August — has wrapped the same hardware in its own pricing and data-plan policy that this hands-on account calls out as self-defeating. Same tablet, two carriers, two very different value propositions.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing the Verizon Tab pay for the same seven-inch hardware under terms that undercut the device's main selling point — pocketability plus connectivity — at exactly the moment T-Mobile offers a cheaper contracted alternative.
Second-order effects
- Carrier policy, not Samsung's hardware, becomes the differentiator in the Tab's launch window: with Gizmodo-style reviews already hostile to the device, Verizon's terms hand fence-sitters a concrete reason to buy from T-Mobile instead.
Third-order effects
- If tablets are sold like smartphones — subsidized and tethered to carrier data plans — then the carrier, not the manufacturer, sets the ceiling on a tablet line's success, making distribution terms a structural battleground for every post-iPad entrant.
The trend: The first wave of Android tablets is being won or lost at the carrier counter, where per-operator pricing and data policies — not device specs — decide which iPad challengers reach buyers.