Cell phone business ?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. Im opening up a cell phone business & im just wondering how a typical day in a cell phone business would be like?

A. I owned and operated a cellphone retail shop from 1997 to 2001. However, before opening my own, I worked in others first, to learn the business, and get a feel for customer expectations. I'm sure the business has changed radically in the eight years I've been out of it, but I can still give you one solid piece of advice: if you have no idea what "a typical day is like" in ANY particular business, you shouldn't be going into THAT business. Before you make that kind of investment, you need to work inthe business at least few months to learn everything you can from the business end- what kind of margins can you expect, what carrier(s) offer the best support and commissions, who your target customers are, etc. I got out of the biz when the carrier I represented exclusively (Cingular) started making it impossible to compete with their company stores in upgrade pricing. By 2001 upgrades/contract extensions were already a bigger business than new activations, and while Cingular paid handsomely for new activations, they paid very little (at least at that time) on upgrades, so we'd actually only break-even or even lose money on upgrades! I assume the wireless retail market has "fixed itself" since then. Well, in my opinion they have a very strong product line-up right now. The R320 is the WAP/Business phone of choice, The R310 is out, and so is the A2618. Two tri-banders are in line, one with GPRS. In the business/high end segment, it's looking good. However, I'm sure Nokia will continue to dominate especially in the low-end segment, pre-paid & teenagers generate lot's of volume for cheaper phones. Motorola isn't considered on par with the others as far as GSM goes, still struggling with bad quality, massive repair percentage, cryptic menues. And, the ultimate brain-loss, the V series where You can't see the display without opening the phone.......

Ask Edwards a Finance Question

Other Questions:

Portable Office Phones ?

ATT is currently marketing a portable office phone that connects with their Merlin system. Does anyone know if there are ANY security features available with that phone? It seems to me that listening for messages on home phones is just a d...

We've a small office VoIP phone network (about 10 machines) running the above software. Phone Manager automatically pops up a screen to show an incoming call, and I'd like to integrate this with our office database which is is browser bas...

I'm currently looking for a Virtual PBX provider. We are a small company with 6 staff and would require incoming numbers in various countries (mostly western Europe + USA). At the moment we have shortlisted 3 companies: Gradwell, Coms.n...

I am trying to do some toshiba digital phone installation. My experience with telecom only goes as much as csu/dsu installation/testing for T1 and T3. I dont have experience with digital phone system. I'm wondering if the group can tell what...

I am looking for a recommendation for a small PBX which can have around 8 POTS extensions with 2 basic rate ISDN exchange lines. The POTS lines will be used for modems and must support 33k and preferably 56k - this is for a setup for testing ...

Edwards Finance Menu

Ask a Question
About Us / Me
Contact Me
Privacy Policy

Sitemap

My Favorite Sites

PFBlog
Google Finance
Yahoo Finance
Motley Fool
Nveille's Financial Blog
AllFinanceMatters
Free Money Finance
2MillionBlog
The Terror Finance blog

Q&A Subjects