When Carphone Warehouse announced (via a press release) that they will start offering the freshly announced Sony Xperia T and Xperia J on September 5th, a few raised eyebrows were pointing to the fact that, when Sony officially announced the device, representatives claimed that both these Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich smartphones will start reaching the consumer market during the fourth quarter of the year. And that doesn’t start until October.
Surprisingly for some Carphone Warehouse customers, the Xperia T is still listed as “coming soon” on the retailer’s website, while the sales line staff will only redirect you back to the website. The Xperia J is nowhere to be found.
Call me paranoid, but I can’t help noticing the amount of traffic that such retailers draw in thanks to such “errors”. Perhaps they do it on purpose, might be the case? Let me explain why this error is so profitable for Carphone Warehouse!
Another UK retailer, Phones4U has opened its pre-order page for the Sony Xperia T, one that mentions that the Xperia T will launch on Wednesday, September 26. Now, Phones4U might have cut a few days on their suggestion as well, or they might have not (we’ll have to wait and see), but when Sony fans hear that the new Sony flagship smartphone will reach Carphone Warehouse some three weeks earlier (and they will most likely do, since stories like this are covered a lot by the tech media), the landing page is bound to get plenty of traffic.
Now, notice the pre-register field in that Carphone Warehouse landing page for the Sony Xperia T? Well, signing your email up to receive news and deals is exactly what the retailers want you to do. Another factor that should be taken into consideration is the fact that pages like this have a fairly decent conversion rate, as most people that sign up for such pages are genuinely interested in the devices.
And this is all without mentioning that the retailer’s SEO department will surely appreciate the impressive number of backlinks they’ve received… In the words of that popular song I can’t name, “it’s all about the money”!
But don’t you think it’s just Carphone Warehouse! Most retailers spill out errors like this: Amazon UK does it, Clove does it, Phones4U does it, all with various rates of success in earning extra bucks trough masked publicity!
Do you guys buy into my conspiracy theory, or could this be just an honest mistake? Drop a comment in the section below and share your point of view!
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