Hop-On Hops Back On the PR Bandwagon

I thought CNN's gushing forth of breathless admiration in today's piece: 'Disposable cell phones on the way' sounded familiar. Yep, it's Hop-On, the same company Slashdotters took to task last March ('Disposable' Cell Phone Actually Repackaged Nokia) after reading the San Francisco Chronicle's expose ("Sample 'new' cell phone really just modified Nokia [8260]"). Maybe this time the technology is for real. Or maybe I'm just too skeptical for my own good. Caveat lector.

Comments

We've already got these

[Robotech_Master]

Granted, they're not usually so inexpensive, but they're called TracPhones (or TracFones, however you misspell it). In fact, I bought a friend one a few months back for $40 on clearance. (Not like he ever seems to have the money to recharge it with minutes, so it didn't seem to do much good, but oh well.)

What remains to be seen is whether these disposaphones' minutes have to be recharged each month like the TracFone's (unless you buy a $100 "all year account" card) or whether they stay on for longer. I'm betting they'll be good for 6 months after purchase, the way the cheapy long distance phone cards are.

A dangerous situation...

[HorsePunchKid]

"Recyclable"? Where are the telephone sanitizers when you need them?

Cell phones overseas

[junimota]

Coming back from an extended trip of Europe and Asia, I was appalled at how far behind our cell phone technology is. GSM seems to be the best solution. You can walk into little cell phone stalls on the side of the street in many countries, get a chip and a card with minutes - for as little as 10 dollars and viola, in a matter of minutes you know have a phone number in that respective country. Refills for minutes are from anywhere from 5 to 50 dollars. Your phone number is yours, doesn't change every time you refill your minutes. And my cell phone worked in every country I was in. I had to buy a phone for there - the GSM phone I had here runs at 1800, not 1900 as it seems to be all over the planet. Any time I happen to go back to Turkey, Greece, or even Singapore, I have my own number. All I have to do is change out the chip, and buy minutes if needed. Now, why can't we have that here in the States?

Price is the obvious issue here

[mblase]

Remember how silly disposable cameras once seemed? "When they first came out, most people thought, 'Ah, why would I want a disposable camera? That changed rather quickly" when consumers discovered new uses for them, said Michaels.

Yes, but I could always buy disposable cameras for around $10 (US), and today can buy cheap non-flash ones for around $6. That's easy to justify. Sixty minutes of air time for $40 isn't quite as easy to throw away. That $10 target is a big psychological barrier for consumers when the word "disposable" is involved.

AT&T can get me $0.05 per minute for state-to-state long distance, twice that for in-state long distance. My non-disposable cell phone gets me 2000 minutes per month for around $100, or $0.20 per minute. If I'm buying a disposable phone, I'd like to pay no more than $0.30-$0.40 per minute, or about $10 for half an hour. For that kind of money, I'd happily send one with my daughter to summer camp, or even take it on vacation myself.

Bottom line: $40 is too much. $20 is managable. $10 is ideal, and if they could hit that dollar amount customers would beat a path to their door.

Does anyone do research anymore?

[monkeydo]

How could CNN print this crap without checking into the history of this company? Surely someone there remembers that this same company has pulled this scam before. Hop-On keeps issuing press releases every month or so touting how close they are to product release, and how succesful they are even though no one has seen one of their phones.

According to all of their press releases they will have CDMA, TDMA, and GSM phones. Quite an engineering and desgin feat for a company that employs 15 people.