This Old Phone? Good Enough for Me

The article that I  read for this week is called  "This Old Phone? Good Enough for Me" by Matt Richtel. This article talks about the cell phone industry and how it has taken a hard hit in this time of recession. 

The marketing research firm, In-Stat,  estimates in its latest report which was released Tuesday,  that shipments of cell phones will drop 20.5 percent worldwide in the next year. It also predicts that the percent of cell phone subscribers will drop from a growth of 19.3 percent  last year to a 9.8 percent growth this year. Most people at this point already have a cell phone and no one has the money to make an upgrade at this point.

This article hits close to home for me because recently I dropped my cell phone in water and it broke. At first, I just assumed that I would go home and get a new one the next weekend, however, when I got to the store, every cell phone i looked at was at-least $150... Therefore, now I am using one of my brothers beat-up old cell phone. But at this point, I rather have this then drop $150 on a new one that I will probably end up breaking eventually anyways.

Making Sense of New Prices on Apple’s iTunes

The article that I read for this week was called Making Sense of New Prices on Apple’s iTunes  by Brad Stone. On April 7th, iTunes great 99 cent prices for every song is being changed to a three tier pricing system where not so good oldies are 69 cents, old songs are 99 cents and new songs are now priced at $1.29 per song.

This new change is not so good for someone like me who loves music and is always buying new songs that just come out. However, if you are someone who does not use apple products, such as a different brand mp3 player you could benefit from this. With raising the price, Apple agreed to remove the DRM protection off the music files so now these songs can be played through different players.