Many of you are familiar with the idea of a subsidized product: you pay less when you buy the device and get a reasonably big contract that has an extra monthly cost to pay off the entire product. Now AT&T wants to give that up, at least when it comes to tablets. According to a document sent to Engadget by a tipster, the famous carrier will give up discounted on contract slates starting right now.
August 19th is when the measure is applied first, if the document is genuine. Of course, they will keep selling tablets, but this time at full price, without commitment. They will bundle them with Data Connect and MobileShare plans, once again without commitment. The reason behind this decision could be the fact that tablets, unlike phones don’t need 24/7 connection and most people opt to buy WiFi only models, after all.
If you think how much time people spend on WiFi using tablets, you’ll see that it doesn’t pay for AT&T to be offering subsidies and services for slates. How many of you actually use mobile broadband on a tablet? And if you do, you probably use it rarely, so selling just 1 or 2 GB per month is not worth it for AT&T. Am I right?
