On the heels of the Verizon iPhone launch, AT&T and Motorola have decided to crush everyone's dreams and highest hopes for Android. The Motorola Atrix was the clear winner in the battle for the coolest story from CES less than a month ago. Now, a month after CES and a month before its release, they've made it irrelevant by pricing the phone's accessories way too high. AT&T sent out a press release that included the following paragraph about pricing:
AT&T will offer two special packages for customers who choose to purchase ATRIX 4G in addition to these unique accessories. The first combines ATRIX 4G and the Motorola Laptop Dock for a promotional price of $499.99 after a two-year service contract and $100 mail-in-rebate after subscription to Data Pro smartphone data plan and tethering add on. Customers who choose to purchase the Motorola Laptop Dock separately pay $499.99. AT&T is also offering an Entertainment Access Kit for ATRIX customers which includes the Motorola HD Multimedia Dock, a Bluetooth® keyboard and mouse, and a remote control for $189.99.
That... is straight-up crazy. The phone itself is a beast in terms of size and specs, but the only thing that made it interesting was its dockability and the webtop environment. 500 dollars fully-subsidized for the phone and laptock dock puts it out of the range of anybody but the most rabid enthusiasts. Also, requiring tethering just to buy the dock subsidized? That adds $20 to the standard plan, or $480 over the life of the contract. What's just as amazing is that they are charging $500 to buy the dock separately. For $500, you can buy any netbook, a decent Windows laptop, or even one of the new class of affordable ultraportable "notbooks" as recently coined by Engadget's Joanna Stern.
We were very enthusiastic about the Atrix and its promise, but also listed some concerns:
So while it is impressive, what will ultimately matter for this phone is execution and price. The following are questions, the answers to which could end up sinking a great idea:
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4. How much will these docks and laptop hardware cost? By all accounts, they’re not junky, so they could run close to $150 or $200. If users don’t want to pay the extra cost, then again, these innovations will fall flat.
What I meant by this was that $200 might be edging too close to full laptop price range and could kill the appeal. I could never have imagined that a "dumb dock" with few legitimate internals could cost $300 subsidized and $500 unsubsidized. Perhaps this demonstrates Motorola's inexperience in sourcing and producing laptop hardware, but whatever the case this is a failure. The phone itself will still be the best Android phone on AT&T, but Motorola and AT&T have killed the Atrix with this pricing. As Steve Jobs would say, this product is DOA. Dead... on... arrival.