But anyway, enough politics! Today was my first full day in Taipei, so what did I do? I visited a phone store and played with smartphones! I did the best I could to communicate with the store employees at FarEastTone here in Taipei. They didn't know much English, so I had to communicate through my mother who knows some Mandarin. Unfortunately her Mandarin isn't very tech savvy, so I had to fill in the gaps with what I already knew about smartphones and pricing.
Android is quite popular Taiwan. I see green Android ads all over the place in Taipei.
It looks like the carriers in Taiwan are doing the same as the carriers in the US --they offer smartphones at subsidized prices if you buy them with a 2-year contract. It appears that phone contracts are less expensive per month here in Taiwan, but they have stricter definitions for what constitutes a peak and non-peak hour call. The 3G Sim Card I bought (I put NT$350 on it, or about $10) came with documentation about peak hours.
-Peak hours: Monday-Friday from 8 AM to 11 PM (essentially the entire day) and Saturday from 8 AM to 12 PM.
-Off-peak hours: Monday-Friday from 11 PM to 8 AM, and Saturday 12 PM to Monday 8 AM.
I didn't find out much about the different phone plans available, since I was only interested in a temporary SIM for my unlocked Motorola dumbphone. But I did ask about prices for some of the smartphones they had available, unlocked with no contract.
They said that any unlocked phone would work with any SIM I put into it, which meant that their definition of "unlocked" is consistent with common sense --AT&T and Verizon "unlocked" phones are actually still locked to the carrier in the States. But buying an unlocked phone from a Taiwan carrier meant that the phone was unlocked even in Taiwan.
Unfortunately I can't remember the exact prices from the store, but I did not feel like the prices were any better than in the States. I primarily asked about HTC phones, since Taiwan is the HTC headquarters of the world (their factories are here, and the company was founded here). I believe one of the HTC single-core phones was selling for $600 USD unlocked. I thought this was ridiculous considering that it was a single-core phone.
It might be that FarEastTone is simply selling unlocked phones at marked up prices to encourage people to sign up for contracts, which seem much more appealing than dropping $600 USD for an old-tech phone.
HTC has started to open its own HTC Stores in Taiwan, so I might be able to find better pricing there. Buying from the HTC Store is like buying an Apple product from Apple --you buy it from the supplier and cut out the middle-man. Let's see if HTC can wow me with prices on their home turf. I am actually interested in buying an unlocked HTC smartphone here in Taiwan, so if their pricing is good I'll do it. As a rational buyer I cannot buy a phone from them unless the performance is comparable or better to other phones at the same price point. I've tested enough Android phones at the store to know what "good" and "bad" performance on Android is, so I have a pretty good judgement of value and performance.
I shall visit the HTC Store soon!
An HTC Store in Taiwan.
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