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Major Hangups Over the iPod Phone
chadwick writes "It seemed like a sure thing: the iPod mobile phone. What could be more irresistible than a device combining the digital-music prowess of Apple Computer (AAPL) with the wireless expertise of Motorola (MOT)? Motorola sent its buzz machinery into overdrive in January when it leaked word that the product would debut at a cellular-industry conference in New Orleans in mid-March. Well, hold the phone. At the New Orleans confab, a frustrated Edward Zander, Motorola's chief executive, stood before a roomful of analysts and reporters and said the handset's debut would have to wait. "
I visit India and other contries, and i must say that the phones and technologies people use there is WAAAY superior than what we use in US.
Synchronizing the phones with computer is standard there, and so is "SMSing" ringtones. If one person buys a ringtone from the carrier (which is around 8 cents), that ringtone can be SMSed to all the friends. There is a nominal charge for SMS also, basically its a huge market which people simply love.
What sucks here is iTunes sells whole song for 99c, and the f**** cell phone carrier sells the MIDI file for that song for 3 dollars, that expires in 3 months!!!! No wonder people use sites like 3guploads.com or PitPim to put ringtones on their phones. The carriers are simply killing the technology by locking too much stuff.
The issue I have with this problem is that it is all so US centric.
:) and we get fancy phones with lots of features.
Guess why the US lags in mobile phone use? - stupid monopolies doing stupid things and the customers having to take it as it's the only game in town - literally sometimes.
As an alternative consider Hong Kong where I live.
There are something like 6 mobile phone companies (plus virtual operators) all competing for the same 7 million people. Almost everyone buys their phones at retail with no lock-in on the carrier that they use. I have bought subsidised phones but they are always cheap and nasty - I gave them to my parents to take back to the homeland as there's no carrier lock-in.
The way all these carriers compete is on call cost and service. It is very cheap to make calls in Hong Kong, free SMS, voicemail, call forwarding. Free calls within the network for designated numbers (Girl Friend to BF for instance) - and most crucially - you pay to both make AND receive calls on your mobile phone.
You pay for the convenience of receiving calls when you're out and about. Or to make calls when you're out. But interestingly land lines do NOT pay a toll to call a mobile.
Best yet is that you can call divert your phone to a landline and no one pays to make the call to your mobile number... unless the calling party uses a mobile.
What this does is encourage people to make lots of calls on their mobile and use it for their main number as no one cares that it is a mobile number - no cost to call it. Hong Kong was first to allow number transfer between carriers resulting in a market that is hugely competitive.
So we have low call costs, lots of value added services, everyone using mobile phones for most of their calls, many people have more than one phone (work, family and mistress
It is a totally different economy for mobile phones in Hong Kong. But there is a way to change the game for the US.
So to the iPod phone... In this HK context the choice of phone comes down to what people want to buy - usually the latest and greatest fashion phone. An iPod phone would be hugely popular here. It would be another fashion phone, the coolest must have toy. And as most people get their phones from suppliers other than the carriers there is no subsidy and nothing stopping an iTunes phone for Hong Kong.
But think of it in reverse: If Apple released an iPod with phone functionality at a slight premium over a standard iPod - say like the iPod Photo is a premium iPod... then it would not need subsidy. It's an iPod not a phone.... no one buys subsidised iPods.
But what has been spoken about is a phone with limited iTunes support - so you enter the realm of carrier subsidy. Wrong way to look at it totally.
I'd buy an iPod 40GB with GSM phone like a shot. And I'd pay HKD$4000 to do so. That's around $500 USD.
I would NOT pay HKD$800 ($100 USD) for a shitty subsidised phone with iTunes that locks me into bad expensive service from one carrier.
So what does Apple want to do? Sell iPods or license iTunes to phone manufacturers? There's no option to my mind. Screw the US carriers and change the game!