I'm not sure about the pricing part of it, but mobile phones in Japan are fairly well locked down with DRM restrictions too. I got a Nokia 6630 smartphone from Vodafone Japan, billed as an mp3 player, photo/video player, tons of games and apps...lo and behold, NOTHING works on it unless you bought the app, song, vid, etc. from Vodafone Japan. What a joke.
You can use HalWin to un-sis apps on your computer, then install them directly into the phone's system folder, and this gets around the primitive DRM. I'm sure the next version won't be so easy to hack, but there you go. So much for other countries having sane services.
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I'm not sure about the pricing part of it, but mobile phones in Japan are fairly well locked down with DRM restrictions too. I got a Nokia 6630 smartphone from Vodafone Japan, billed as an mp3 player, photo/video player, tons of games and apps...lo and behold, NOTHING works on it unless you bought the app, song, vid, etc. from Vodafone Japan. What a joke. You can use HalWin to un-sis apps on your computer, then install them directly into the phone's system folder, and this gets around the primitive DRM. I'm sure the next version won't be so easy to hack, but there you go. So much for other countries having sane services.