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Cell Phone Purchasing: Drop Down?
walnut writes: "There is an interesting story on CNET about the future of cell phones, how the major players Erricson, Motorola and Nokia are beginning to have to face the realization that new sales are quickly tapering off. How they will entice people to buy new phones is becoming a big question."
To: bob@firewall.nokiaa.com
From: vp@firewall.nokiaa.com <Julius VIP Woston>
Subject: recent dip in sales
Bob,
I dont need to tell you what kind of filthy lucre we'd be swimming in if we could sell a single phone to every other adult male in China. I am mandating you to start lobbying the government there to reduce the severity of their drug laws.
If you are successful, we would at least get a phone into the hands the dealers, there. I know for a fact that they are envious of their western counterparts in that regard. The rest will follow.
Say hi to Jenny and the kids for me.
Something I've noticed is that mobiles only seem to last about 12/18 months reliabaly anyway.
The battery doesn't hold its charge, you've dropped it so many times the cover is all scratched, etc, etc.
And certainly here in the UK you can get a new one from your service provider every 12 months anyway.
Surely this is a none-story?
My roommate is considering dropping his land line and getting his wife a cell phone. For $40/month she gets 600 day minutes, and 1000 weekend minutes, and the weekends are all long distance included. That phone also includes caller ID and voice mail. His land line service is $50/month, after you add in the options included in the cell phone (except voice mail!). He doesn't use the land phone for 600 minutes a month, and his wife makes a lot of long distance calls to family out of state (weekends). So it would be cheaper for him to drop the land line phone. (He is a carpenter and needs a cell phone for work)
Cell phones are not cheaper for people who make a lot of local calls from one location.
Paying for incomcing calls isn't quite as big of an annoyance as you think. Most plans have first incoming minute free. (so wrong numbers don't cost you anything) Also because you pay for that time phone Spam is illegal. I don't get calls on my cell phone about new siding for my home (and I rent), and the like.
For me a land phone doesn't make sense. Since high school the longest I've lived at one address was just over a year. My cell phone number hasn't changed for several addresses. When I move again it won't change either. Yes I pay more for it, but I still won't go back. (I wish they would lower prices, but they have us users)
How about not charging $80 and up for a phone and not charging 3 times what home phone service costs. Wireless communication has tripled in cost over the last year while overall inflation was more like 15%.
1. The Internet is hard to control. If you want to put up content, and can afford the bandwidth, you are in business. No government licensing or lack of spectrum can stand in your way. To phone people, this is total anarchy. They don't grok it.
2. PCs are hard to control. Even with non-open software like Windows sometimes coming under suspicion of supporting interfaces for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and Intel messing around with snoopware in its CPUs, PCs are still powerful machines totally under the control of their individual owners. Telcos, OTOH, have a long history of actively enabling their national authorities to snoop.
3. Because of this lack of understanding, telephony products have stinted on supporting privacy, customer control, and anonymity. Imagine if a phone company offered a product about which they could say: It is open, absolutely private with no "back doors," possibly anonymous if you want that, and you can combine it with any software or service offering you desire. Hahahahaha. Suggest this in a telco, and off to the loony bin with you. But this can be said of PCs and the Internet. It illustrates the depth and breadth of the chasm telcos have to cross.
4. This also spells doom for phone/PDA combos. They do not embody PC-like control. With phone/PDA combos, you are exposed to the telco view of privacy (at their discretion) and contol (none).
5. The real answer is that convergence will happen when your phone is a PC, with all the attributes of a PC, and "phone service" is just a wireless Internet application.
6.In fact, for "phone service" to become an Internet application, it is more likely that our concept of a phone call will change (like voice chat, maybe), than that the Internet will start behaving like the telephone network.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Heh, it much more embarrassing than that for California. I bought and used a VoiceStream phone that used an identity card in Oklahoma City. In 1997.
anyway, I can't say I'm surprised about sales dropping down. after all, once you have a cellphone, you don't need another unless the first breaks *or* you're changing for 'image' reasons. and when the best reason to change is 'image', as far as I'm concerned, it means that the field has become yet another plain old commodity. i may want to have one or not, but what's clear is that once i do have one i'm not going to buy another for a very long time.
There are limits to how small the phone can be. You need a certain level of transmitter power to communicate with the cell site. Higher bit rates require higher transmitter power. You need a battery large enough to power the phone for a reasonable period of time. The phone needs enough surface area for a usable user interface.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
My first phone (GSM-1900) had a SIM card. It was replaced with a CDMA phone that did not have a SIM card when the service provider switched from GSM to CDMA. Activation of the new phone was a pain in the butt. I had to spend 30 minutes talking to a customer service representative who had me enter long sequences of undocumented commands that configured the phone. I doubt that I could swap phones without a lot of grief.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"Smart-cards" aka SIMs have always been available on GSM cellphones, even in the US. When I went on vacation last year, I pulled out my SIM card from my Omnipoint (now Voicestream) phone, stuffed it into a rented dual band cellphone, and used it in Germany, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. US customers who want this feature can have it, provided they subscribe to a GSM network. They can switch cellphones as much as they like while keeping the SIM card and their account.
Seeing that most people here take mobile phones as some kind of fashion I do not see why there should be a large number of unsold phones (at least here)
----- On the requirements it said: Windows 98 or better - so I installed Linux
Uh...no they don't. I only buy knicknacky stuff at Radio Shack with cash, and every time they (or anybody else) says "Can I have your fleem number?" I say "Of course not." This usually freezes them for about 3 seconds, after which they go ahead and finish the sale.
Apparently, this is kind of rare, but I suspect it is more common in the geek community. So, does anybody out there really hand over this kind of info any more?
Babar
There was a story the other day in the local paper about how rude cellphone user are. (NOTE: this is in the US - Florida to be exact) The article compared cellphone users to smokers[1] because they (we!) appear to have no regard for others. They'll take a call anywhere: in school, in church, in a movie theatre, etc. One example in the article was an elementary school teacher who was giving a math lesson. Just as she was reaching the critical concept she was trying to get across in the lecture, she is interrupted by Fur Elise or some such coming from one of the 7-year-old's backpack. "It's probably my Mom," he said.
I have to agree that this is rude. Rude of the mother to call during class and rude of the pupil to not turn the ringer off. I don't necessarily think it has anything to do with cellphones, however, it's just a symptom of rudeness in general. I hope that it's just us Yanks that behave this way and this is not a worldwide phnomenon, but I have my doubts.
But there is starting to be pretty severe lashback against cellphone usage here in the States. There are lots of bumper stickers that carry messages such as "Hang up the phone and drive" and I think I heard that one state outlawed driving while talking on the phone. This is in contrast to Europe and Asia, where I gather that a cellular phone is something of a status symbol.
[1] I mean no offense to smokers; I'm only paraphrasing the article.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
Unless he has the cell phone implanted in his head running off of "Matrix" style bio-energy that can't be shut off without him flatlining, I'd say he's an idiot for leaving it on, or even taking it with him camping.
Actually, as a side note I've read that cell phones are becoming a real problem for the forest service, because people are now doing more challenging things than they would otherwise, just because they know they can always call for help!
Everyone just try and remember that helicopter ride home is not free. Cell phones can be nice for real emergency use, but too many people use them as a crutch.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We can get down to the 7 per minute range...if you buy in lots of 500-1000. I probably spend 30min on the phone a month total, and I consider that too much. It would probably be down to 15 if it weren't for all the damn telemarketers.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Let's see.
30 cents a minute.
2 hours reading Slashdot.
That comes to $36 dollars to enjoy reading a lot of useless opinions in a cramped format.
I make a lot, but not that much. If you've got other bills to pay, this is useless.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
From about 10 to 3 years ago, I had a cell phone, pager, and I wandered the earth content that someone could always reach me, and I could always call them right back from the comfort of whereever I happened to be at the time. Cell phones were, while not rare, hadn't exactly diluted into the peon class yet.
Now everyone, and I mean EVERYONE has a cell phone, and a pager, and all of them have tons of nifty options and cost practically nothing, and gosh by golly its just so damn cool.
I don't have one anymore. Or a pager. I've come to somewhat despise the fact that more people seem to have cell phones these days than watches.
I've come to learn that I don't NEED to be reached when I'm out shopping for 30 minutes. Nothing really seems to be THAT important. More importantly, I don't usually WANT to be reached when I'm not working. Thats MY time people. If you need me for something, just send me an email. Just as easy as a phone call, and I'll get to it when I have some time to kill.
When I first got a cell phone, I used it primarily for business related reasons, and the ocassional 30 second "hey I'll be home at 5" kind of deal. Sometime when you're bored, find someone talking on a cell phone (shouldn't be too hard) and eavesdrop. 9 times out of 10, they're probably in the middle of a 30 minute conversation about pointless gossip that really wasn't so cruicial that it needed to be discussed while the cell phone customer was picking out maxi pads in the grocery store (I would recommend hanging out in a different aisle tho)
Remember when cell phones didn't have a "style"? They were built the way they were to be the most space efficient. Now they're designer brands.
In any event, I've been without a cell phone for 2 years now. in all that time, I can't recall any time where it would have come in handy.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Yes and no.. The device can be broken down to a number of smaller components.. a battery and transmitter built into a belt or wrist watch talking to the user interface (with blue tooth for instance), which is the size of a credit card and can be tucked away in a shirt pocket. The user interface only has a tiny battery - enough to send and receive the radio singals to the actual "phone" unit.
I mean, this is just one idea.. there are many ways to do it of course. To TALK, you only need a microphone and speaker, which can be very small. To dial, you need a little more, of course.
This does tend to lead to a lot of swapping between people on contract that get a new one every 12 months and people on pay-as-you-go who don't. Since the phone number moves with your sim card, swapping the phones really isn't a problem. So when I get a new phone, someone at work trades his and some cash for mine, I give his to one of my nephews and his goes to my other nephew. People at work swap phones all the time. I have a queue of people bidding for my current one (because of the built in IRDA modem) and there is another 6 months to go!
Also both my nephews have broke or lost phones at one time or another. I think the demand for more phones will pick up if they can get people on pay-as-you-go to switch to contract if they break or lose one. However with so many spare phones about that could be trickier then it sounds.
The simple way is new standards such as GPRS and new features on phones that entice people to upgrade.
Bob.
MP3 player (with remote control), radio and TV, videoconferencing, multiplayer games, and emergency beacons.
Yep, my opinion exactly (apart from walking with your girlfriend
Companies seem to be having more and more trouble with the concept of a employee being a human being, not a "component". Witness the increasing encroachment on communications during working hours (it used to be accepted that employees couldn't stop being family members during working hours; they would have to contact doctors, schools, be findable in case of emergency and so forth, in cases where the privacy of the employee would be important to them; increasingly, regardless of how awkward it is, or how much of the normal business day they work, employees are expected to *accept* that any email or phone conversation will be monitored and they will be penalized if they are not using "company resources" for business purposes only.
At one of my previous jobs (which was one of the reasons I left) I resisted giving them my landline number for some time; I was eventually dragged into an upper manager's office and was told I *had a duty of care* to the company that included being reachable out of office hours if needed; needless to say, there was no extra pay or benefits for this "duty" and it didn't show on my contract. You may also safely assume that the few calls I received due to this weren't exactly life threatening - upper management types who couldn't access their email (forgot their passwords *again*) or needed to "do a power breakfast" and therefore needed information sorting out overnight so they could pick it up at the office and go straight to the meeting. I don't work there anymore.
I am a computer geek, check my email every 3 minutes, cary a palm, etc. but I like to "disappear" sometimes.
I am as much of a geek as I can be given I am married - and therefore have demands on my time.
Last week, my friend got a call at 2am in the middle of the forest while camping, one of his companies servers needed rebooted and the tech didn't know the command!! I don't want that..
I wouldn't be *too* surprised to find companies starting to dictate which holidays their employees can or can't take - based on reachability and ability to make it either back to home base or to someplace they can remotely administrate. Decent skilled techs are getting a scarce resource, and the cheaper but semi-skilled paper MSCEs which are so attractive to HR and Upper management fall apart when left to their own devices.
Am i the only one who is offended by the idea of new mobile phones with GPS and blue-tooth in them being able to send you digital cupons as you walk by the store?
More because they should not *know* you are walking by their store, and by knowing that they are likely to want a tighter "target" than that - only people who are walking towards their store, and have been in (list of competitors) store in the previous day so are likely to be shopping for similar goods.
--
-=DaveHowe=-
I would buy a cell phone which supported PGP Fone. I would definitly buy a cell phone which allowed me to port PGP Fone to it (in pure software).
Actually, cell phones make perfectly logical secure login devices, i.e. a device which contains a PGP private key and authenticates it's self by signing data with that key. I would only need one password (the password for my phones PGP private key file) and I would ONLY type this password into my phone, which would then tell my system that it's really me who wants to login. No hacker could get my password because the system dose not know my password, it only knows a public key to authenticate me. Hey, you could feed all you email through your cell phone too (for PGP encryption) while your at it. I suppose you need some new way for the computer and phone to talk to one another (like infared). Anywho, the importent bit is that only you and your cell phone ever know your password and only your cell phone knows your public keys.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
How about realizing that since there are a finite amount of people, there is a finite amount of cell phones that can be sold? Or for that matter, that since we live on an isolated planet with finite resources, that our economy cannot keep growing forever?
Bloody economists.
Wah!
How about making a cell phone that doesn't need to be labelled with radiation warning? That would be a good next step.
It as a false assumption that mobile phones exist so that their users could be available 24/7. This might be because previously mobile phones were only affordable for those who really needed them such as businessmen, people on call etc.
In your point of view, this may be a false assumption. To me, it is the reason I don't have one. Yes, I can turn it off, but I don't want to have to deal with people (family, friends, mainly bosses) saying, "I called you 20 times. Stop turning off your phone."
I personally feel no need for one. I represent a lot of people who don't want one for the same reasons. If I'm not at home or at the office, I don't want a phone ringing. It's that simple.
This isn't an assumption, this isn't me talking people out of getting phones, this is a personal opinion.
you know, make it so that old phones will no longer work on the new standard or network that has lots of cool new features...
oh, wait. they're already doing that. it's called 3G.
He is wrong an unbelievable number of times. (Monkeys spouting things off at random get things right occasionally)
He is also incredibly biased. He used to be a big E-Machines hyper until they went with a different underwriter, wherupon he switched 180 degrees, and started blasting E-Machines. A quick web search will quickly verify this.
So much for the "chinese wall" between the analysts and underwriters at the big accounting firms.
How about introducing new generations of phones which are safer than the last "safe" generation of phones?
:)
Works for the automobile industry
How about throwing in a new standard every couple of years and make old phones obsolete?
Currently, most of us use GSM for our mobile telephony addiction. In 2001-2003, the new third generation networks are going to be deployed. This creates a huge new market, as the early adopters will buy the new multimedia-enabled phones immediately, and, after a while the average joe will trade his GSM for a GSM/WCDMA double standard phone. The drop in pure-GSM phone sales will then be matched by the increase in smart phones sales and in 3rd generation phones.
Another niche to be explored is the travellers' one. (Software reconfigurable) phones that work in the US and Europe/Japan will be very nice for people that don't like to own a couple of phones and like to travel light. A terminal with cdma2000 and WCDMA and maybe GSM will make me drool anytime... ;-)
adaptI just checked out cell phones again. They still seem to cost about twice as much per month as the landlines. I won't be getting one until they get a bit more competitive. Also there is the nuisance factor. If you have a phone, people can call you. When you need to get some work done, you get out of the office so you won't be disturbed. With a cell phone in your pocket that won't work so well. I think that nuisance factor outweights the added convenience of being able to call out from anywhere, like sitting in the park, or sitting in the toilet, or the toilet in the park, or...
Another problem is that most service plans require you to pay for incoming calls! Not only are people bothering you, but you're paying for it. That really adds insult to injury. The rates I saw seemed to run around 30 to 50 cents a minute for local calls, with 15 cents a minute extra for long-distance. This was digital service in the MidWest.
I don't think that cellphones will get too far beyond the gadget-freak crowd until service gets quite a bit cheaper. I'm just not willing, right now, to pay more than double for phone service, just to make it easier for others to bother me. I rarely have to make a call when I'm not near a land line, so the added convenience is just isn't worth much extra money for me.
Nels
See what I've been reading.
Ever since the mobile phone industry began (at least in UK and Ireland) it has all been about subsidising phones to get new cutomers on networks. This has now reached near saturation.
Without a new network to sell to people, all the mobile phone companies can do is to produce smaller models and maybe integrate in more features BUT as most people won't be subsidised to buy these phones they are not going to sell many unless they have a killer app (how many of us would swap to another phone if it was running a Free Flashable OS?, or if it incorporated a 128Mb mp3 man, WAP is not a killer app, it'll just get let them eeek out a few more millions). The mobile phone companies will be back to pulling in the cash as soon as significant numbers of newer model phone requiring networks appear...until then they have a quiet time.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Browsing the net on a phone is currently not a very good way to go (using WAP, anyway). The day North Americans can get phones like the Japanese do (with their huge-ass almost-pda sized screens and touch-screen dialing), then we can implement a different type of protocol. I mean, the web is not a text-area. Ever tried browsing the net with a text-only browser? Let me just say that it sucks. And you know what? Convenience is what drove every single one of the products you ridiculed to success, but let me just say that WAP is not convenient. Whereas we have "One-Click Access" to a lot of things, cell-phone owners don't. Surfing the net on the cell-phone isn't the way to go, but surfing the net with a PDA+Cell solution IS. I mean, typing an e-mail message on a cell-phone is ludicris (sp?), where writing on a pda is good enough.
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
-legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
It may be useful to highlight other uses for "phones" besides handsets.
Wireless datacom (using the celluar nets) is already starting to gain some momentum. There are a lot of applications for this sort of technology
...the vending machine that calls the distributor when it's running low on something...the parking garage that calls the warning sign on the edge of town when its full...the sensor in the basement of your apartment building that calls the manager when the furnace breaks down...
New standards will always sell some new handsets, but growth in the medium term seems destined to come from untapped, unsaturated markets.
Vaya con huevos, my darling.
Most Nokia and Ericson phones have their OS stored in flashable memory. It is possible to fetch the version and revision number by entering a code. I guess it would be possible to do some reverse engineering and write your own OS. :-)
Linux for Phone ?
I like this idea
I was actually thinking of FPCGAs in order to update the processors themselves.
For example, most phones contain an ARM processor.
Their is a patented technology which allow the use of an ARM as a soft modem's platform.
I was then thinking of the ability of rewriting the CPU's internal logics in real time in order to embed such features without the user even notices it.
We would then have an enormous potential here.
Imagine: an evolutive BeoWulf cluster of apparently-looking phones that would in fact allow any of the permanently connected users to share his unused bandwith with the other people whose phone would have the same technology. BTW, the processing (unlike bandwidth) power coul also be shared in order to help each other in case he has a tremendous amount of data to (un)encrypt, hence the BC
I know, it is not a good idea to mention a BeoWulf cluster in a Slashdot comment as it usually gets moderated down but I think this is not off-topic here.
Concerning the hefty discount you mention, I still think it is viable to just give the phone away (along with its communication) and actually gain some money this way.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
You buy a phone because you buy cellular service. Going upscale isn't going to get more people into the game. Honestly - the idea of a $200-300-400 phone is just absurd. Compounding this is that most telcos tell you which phones you can use, typically the ones they sell else there is a penalty. If the phone man'f'trs want to sell more phones then they have to work to pressure the telcos in the US to do something about the tangled mess of the industry. There is no national standard or integration such as in Europe. The rates are an order of magnitude higher than in other parts of the world. Service and coverage is spotty at best. You can't integrate billing unless you get land line and mobile from the same telco and even that's hit or miss. The cost of phone insurance for your multihundred dollar phone is in the loan-shark range.
As far as the phone devices themselves are concerned did they even consider that I might not want to replace EVERY accessory if I buy a new phone? The power connectors are different, the headset plugs are different, the batteries are different - and these are from the same man'f'tr.
They will sell more phones when more people can use and afford the service plans.
This used to be my argument for not owning a cell phone. Well, now that I've had one for a few years, I know that it can be turned off or set to silent mode - and I do this. If I don't want to be reached, I won't be reached.
Technology should enable you to do things. If it forces you to a faster, less managable pace of life, then it's not working for you but against you. You said you got a call at 2am in the middle of the forest while camping.. Then you said "I don't want that.". Well, leave the phone at home, or turn it off. Hell, with any decent phone, you can set profiles to only let through certain numbers so that you can be reached by your friends but not by work if you want.
Wireless penetration in other countries is larger than in the U.S. The price per minute in the U.S. is still around 25/cents/minute unless you buy a very large bulk of minutes each month in advance and use or lose them. I've heard in Israel, for example, airtime is around a U.S. penny a minute.
It's also difficult for existing customers to upgrade their phones without paying through the nose. The carriers should realize the old model of trying to give away the phone to get customers doesn't work unless you are trying to jump start a market. It's already there. Lower your air rates across the board and charge a higher fee for the phone itself.
I mean, just try going into a cell store and tell them you want to buy a phone without activation and see what kind of looks you get...
One of the biggest challenges facing the mobile phone operators is the continued non-adoption of global standards in the States. From one hand this means the States is the world's wireless backwater, but from the other the most valuable single market is too important to miss.
If the States creates its own standards yet again then this will increase development costs for the phone manufacturers.
However as it is estimated at 2 years at least before the States get a sniff at 3G it could be that the rest of the world will be too far ahead.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Most people don't realize the real costs of a cellular phone. I started out with a Nokia 2110i myself and after 3 years I wanted something more so I bought myself an Ericsson SH888 which I still own (mainly due to its irda & modem facilities) and I don't see myself changing phones very soon. I have all the access I need with my Psion series 5mx. I can easily send/receive SMS, email, fax. I can browse the Inet and all of that without any hassle like cables etc. What else would you need?
And then there is allways WAP. IMVHO a pathetic way to try and sell even more phones which I'm pretty sure will fail alltogether. The whole Gopher concept seems to have failed horribly on the (cheap) Internet, do you really think that it will re-live on another (expensive) medium? I don't think so...
If they really want to innovate they should move on IMHO. A lot of people start complaining about radiation emitting from phones so pick up the oppertunity and go on. Like you could see at the last CeBIT; sattelite phones with the size of an old(er) cellular. Who needs GSM antenna's when you can directly use a sattelite (which could send to some relaystation which could spreaden the signal using another frequency band)? If you want to make more money on phones I personally believe thats where to get it. Offcourse it needs investment (I don't keep up with the developments but I doubt that these products are 'consumer ready') but thats the case for everything nowadays.
In the future we can expect such wonderful features as:
1) A method to locate your position. Ostensibly for 911 services, phone companies will soon realize that they can make money by selling the service of blipping adverts from companies in your vicinity. Some bright soul will come up with the idea of having a signal emitted, say, your grocery when you're near. The grocery will then grep its records (Based on that discount card you have,) realize that milk you bought two weeks ago must be pretty rank, and pop up an ad on your phone reminding you that now would be a great time to get some new. No doubt they'll take a patent out on this idea, despite its obviousness. I'd consider this a great project for a high school programming class.
Radio Shak is already well positioned to do this (With batteries, not milk) since they already know your name, address and phone number as well as what you bought and when.
Of course, other people might also want to know your positions and movements. That suspicious spouse, stalkers and law enforcement will all benefit from this service. Remember: Deploying 911 hardware: $1.5 billion. Average cell phone: $45. Fingering the "Real Killers" from their cell phone locality records: Priceless.
2) Bluetooth: Now your cell phone can be 0wn3d, too. PDAs and other small devices don't have a lot of room, and the last thing the designers ever worry about is security.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Um, what you're talking about are FSM SIM cards. In countries with a developed and unified GSM network(s) such as most of the countries in Europe, Asia etc. GSM is the one standard. Therefore, all our phones have SIM cards that can be swaped. It works very, very, well.
Want a Nokia 7110 on One2One, but have an Erikson? No problem, pop the SIM out, and stick it in the 7110. Same network, same number, diferent phone.
If the US would/had settled on a single network standard, instead of the (Three?) systems they currently have, You Too could experience the benifits of such a system. As it is now, you sound pretty screwed.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I am a computer geek, check my email every 3 minutes, cary a palm, etc. but I like to "disapear" sometimes..
Last week, my friend got a call at 2am in the middle of the forest while camping, one of his companies servers needed rebooted and the tech didn't know the command!! I don't want that..
Am i the only one who is offended by the idea of new mobile phones with GPS and blue-tooth in them being able to send you digital cupons as you walk by the store?
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If God Droppd Acid, Would he see People???
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
A few years ago, I noticed bag phones showing up at thrift stores. They were asking like $35-$40 or so for them. Then the 9 inch brick phones started showing up. Now the handheld cellular phones are showing up, and the large quanitity of junked cell phones is starting to become a real problem. They're going for $6-$10 now, cheap enough to buy a junker just for its NIMH battery.
.us that is) I wouldn't mind a better plan than a new customer, or at least not having to sign a year contract in exchange for re-using a perfectly good cell phone. Even if I had to find one that was originally issued by my intended phone company, that wouldn't be too bad.
Hell, I was even given one AMPS analog (a really lightweight Motorola) and one PCS digital phone from my mom and stepdad because they hadn't liked the plans with which they got the phones, or something like that.
So does anyone know how easy it is to re-use such phones? (in
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
1) feature boom: Introduce more & more features, so everyone will want the latest model (what? they already do that?)
2) baby babble phone: Lower the difficulty of usage, so that even babies can start using them (now there's an unexploited market)
3) Lower the quality: Let them automagically break down after 'warranty period + 1 day' (what, they already do that?)
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Exactly! And what is this crazy stuff I keep hearing about "e-mail"? Why would I ever want to use clumsy $2000 computer to send messages to people when I can fax, write or call them? And these "automobiles"...for godsakes, can't people just walk or ride a horse?!
No matter what the invention, a lot of people will initialy think its useless, but maybe it isn't. Time will tell.
Sometimes I amaze even myself.
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With those tiny smart-cards, it's trivial for anyone to trade in old cell phones for new ones, and it breaks the current phone companies monopoly, since currently there's a pretty darn high barrier of entry to switch phone providers (you have to get a new phone if you want to switch from ATT to Verizon).
For $30 US a month, you can get 2000 minutes in Hong Kong. Cheaper service means more customers, which means a larger market for cell phones.
I wish I could remember where, but I heard somewhere that in some places like Japan (I think), people get a new phone every 6 months for no other reason except to have the latest phone.
Maybe the bulk of new cellular technology markets are just going to stay in the regions of the world where image is so important in that way. To be honest I hope that never happens here. I hate mobile phones enough without them draining my bank account even more so I can look trendy in front of potential employers (who incidently can go to hell if they judge me on my phone. :)
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As long as there are new features to add, there are new customers. We are still in the very early stages of development of a "portable information device". PDA's, cellular phones, cameras, GPS's, computers, TV's etc. will all converge into one system (not necessarily one physical device).
When there is a device that allows you to talk to your friend, wirelessly, and see your friend in clear, sharp color picture, who will want an old crappy GSM phone anymore? When the phone transfers 10Mbps data and is online 24/7, who is going to use modems, ADSL or cable modems or even ethernet anymore? When the phone is small enough to embed into a shirt button, who will carry around the now-considered-small zippo sized phones? The only obstacle is price, and that too is dropping fast. I happily use my GSM phone to connect my Palm Pilot to the net to read and write email, check news, weather, sport scores and stock prices.
There is also a long way to go for software and services - ideas.. What if the phone knew where you are so it could tell you that, around the corner, your friend is sitting in a cafe? What if the phone could tell you that there is traffic ahead so you should get of the freeway or you will be stuck in the jam for 45 minutes? What if you could do your banking using the phone and order tickets? What if the phone had a Java virtual machine and a TCP/IP stack? All this already exists but isn't well integrated or conveniently usable yet (too expensive, too bulky, too slow etc.).
Quite soon we see that "phone" is not relevant anymore. We're talking about a whole new generation of information devices. You don't have to be Einstein to see that this is what - at least Nokia - i shooting for. Just look at their 3G pages, "media screens" etc.. Sun is talking about information appliances, Nokia has cooperation with Palm and Psion..
With low-power processors like the Crusoe, small computers like PDA's and phones will be used for *much* more in the not-so-distant future.. To say that "we're running out of features" is absurd.