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Motorola Unveils Phone Vending Machines
DaveWick79 writes "The 'Instantmoto' is being installed at 20 malls and airports nationwide and will carry about 30 products including 12 phones and 18 accessories. Included is the popular Razr and you can choose whether or not to purchase with a service plan. Instead of being dropped into a tray, apparently a robotic arm will 'gently deliver' the product to consumers. The only question now is, will we be able to pay for these items using our cell phones?"
I remember that some company in the late 90's had a brain-dead business plan to sell "disposable" cellphones in supermarkets and vendor machines. Made out of cheap plastic and designed to be thrown away once the minutes in it were exhausted...
Yeah, probably the people in charge of this "great idea" are not panhandling now, as I thought they would.
No sig for the moment.
It's going to be interesting to see what price they put on the phones without a service plan. I suspect that the phone companies inflate the value of the phones that they discount, leading to inflated sales tax payments in most states in the USA (for those who don't understand this, when you buy a phone with a service plan, because services are not usually subject to sales taxes, the state insists that the vendor collects and pays sales tax based on a nominal full price of the phone, even if the price paid for the phone is discounted, sometimes to zero).
If the price without a plan is less than the price that the phone company would normally quote for the phone, one could argue that less sales taxes are due on a new discounted phone.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I first saw a soda vending machine similar to this in Germany. A little elevator moved up, a robot arm gently pushed the soda onto the elevator, and it brought it down to the door. I chuckled at the ingenuity, but I really started to appreciate it after coming back and using the soda machine at church. It unceremoniously dumps it down the shoot. When you open it, it, well.... SHOOTS!!!
That soda machine ranked up there with the self-cleaning toilet seat for pure engineering coolness! Third runner up was the radar that told you how close to the curb you were. That was the first time I had ever seen that!
Those danged German engineers! They think of EVERYTHING!!!
dochood
Then how about preloaded content... on the mobile?
t ed_smartphones_reveal_corporate_secrets/0,13006174 4,139268276,00.htm!
In Japan I reckon you could make a bit of a killing by preloading the mobiles with "schoolgirl" content! Some text messages, photos, a bit of video, voice mail, and some music... pretend it was an actual schoolgirls mobile that hasn't been deleted and is being resold - executives are doing it already with sensitive corporate data their smartphones and laptops http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/_Undele
Yeah- the idea is that you don't have to interact with a person.
Heh -- I suppose they'll buy the phones to interact exclusively with machines.
We now have a generation or two of people who are perfectly content to talk to an inanimate object. This is just the next step -- people who only talk to inanimate objects
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Well...
I bet the terrorists will just love these.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Which brings me to an interesting thought (for which I'm sure my Karma will suffer):
How is the Prez, CIA, NSA or whoever supposed to get FISA warrants for every one of these phones? I mean, if I were a terrorist, I would never make a call from the same phone twice, and never for more than a few minutes per call. Sure, you spend a bit more money, but by the time the Prez gets a FISA warrant, you three or four phones past the one they are listening to.
Just a question I've pondered and would like answered.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Was at the Grammercy Park Hotel in NYC earlier this week. In the room is a JBL iPod dock and a little note saying something like, "this iPod is provided as a courtesy for you during your stay. If you wish to purchase it and the songs we have preloaded, $750 will be added to your bill." The weird part? There wasn't any iPod in the dock! I had to call down to the front desk and say, "Hey! WTF?". They explained that the hotel had just opened and the iPods were not available yet. I'm thinking, "Duh! Then how about removing the little freakin' sign saying you're going to charge me $750 for the missing iPod???
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The average airline passenger is far above average in income and these and also people on vacation are willing to spend a lot more than they usually would. $150 will often seem like not that much in comparison to the ticket. Also a lot of travelers have to wait a long time in an airport with nothing to do.
An airport is a very secure place to put a machine without worrying about theft.
If these machines could dispense music to those that already had an ipod, they'd get tons of business.
I don't know how much simpler they could make it.
Really, though, as long as they get a photo of each Arab paying cash for a phone, that's all they really need. The NSA will be monitoring all these phones anyway, so I don't see how much difference it makes. Besides, all the phones will have GPS receivers in them. And as long as they believe they're tracking every Moslem in America, Bush will continue to report that we're safer, (at least for as long as we vote Republican.)
John
What if the cost of the iPod was a deposit, and you could drop your iPod at the 'Returns' counter at the destination airport and recieve 70% of your deposit back? Or if you fall in love with it mid-flight, you could just keep it...