HTC One A9's $399 price is a limited-time special
That’s because the phone jumps up by 100 bucks to $499 on November 7. It turns out that $399 price was an early promotional price, designed to move pre-orders before the phone arrives here in the U.S.
It gets worse for those overseas. The One A9 will set you back about $600 if you’re in UK. HTC says each region’s sales team gets to set the pricing, which brings a new level of fragmentation to Android.
HTC offered the following statement to The Verge:
The cost of the HTC One A9 is the same worldwide to all distributors and operator partners. For end consumers, HTC’s sales regions are given the freedom to set prices and promotions as they see fit for local market needs. The One A9 price in the US is a very limited-time promotional offer for that region’s online store, as well as select HTC-only franchise stores. The offer is a special promotional pre-sale and is expected to conclude once the One A9 is available on-shelf at major retail and distributor partners.
After the promotional pre-sale offer ends, the new price in the US at htc.com will be $499.99 beginning 12:01am on 11/7.
So if your heart is set on making the One A9 your next phone, you better head to HTC’s online store and throw down some digital cash by the end of the day on Nov. 7.
Why this matters: The consensus around the web was that the One A9 was already a tough sell at $400, especially when you consider the Nexus 5X is such a solid phone at $379. At $500, the road to success may be even bumpier for HTC than we originally thought. We’ll let you know more once we give it a thorough test and write up our review, coming very soon.