Entirely apart from the WAP issue, Alsop's no dummy.
Maybe he's smarter than he knows - I believe he
concedes defeat prematurely on one of his better
theories:
"....I've posited that people won't use devices
for functions that compete with the original
purpose of the device. WebTV, for example,
isn't that popular because surfing the Web
via your TV set gets in the way of watching
television. Watching DVD movies on PCs is
more of a technology demo than something
anyone actually wants to do. Combine my
theory with my contrarian nature, and I
couldn't see how people would convert a
mobile device designed for talking to other
people into one used for getting stock quotes
and e-mail messages. Ergo: Why Abuse Phones?"
What he misses here is that mobile phones, like
all phones, have been used as "browsers" and
for "mail" for years, despite the terrific annoyance
of a single output format: audio. Touchtoning through
voice-prompted menus is a kind of "blind browsing"
that we've been putting up with for some reason, and
voicemail is mail, after all.
Adding text display is just an enhancement of what
phones (and computerized, personalized telephony)
were already doing for people. Note that voicemail
and touchtone menus are services that pre-date
widespread mobile telephony - but nobody
bought a new device just to listen to their voicemail or
check their bank balance over the wire. Text doesn't
"compete for the original purpose of the device"; it
doesn't "get in the way": rather, it complements the
audio format, and completes a picture that touchtone
keypads and digital telephony started.
But if you're not in the U.S., you already know this.
What I found really interesting in Alsop's piece was
his prediction that he would junk his palmtop. This
might be worth taking seriously - there are, after
all, only maybe 8 million PalmPilots out there, which
might put it close to early-adopter saturation.
For all the excitement and undoubted convenience that
palmtops represent, they might yet turn out to be a
transitional technology.
Geeks love things when they start to become possible -
hence diehard HP200LX fandom. Early adopters
love things when they start to become practical -
hence the Palm phenomenon, after the Newton debacle.
Mainstream consumers love things when they become
dramatically better than what they had before. And that's
the *real* paydirt. (As opposed to mere stock bubble;
Cringely has an excellent piece on this, comparing the
3com mothership valuation with that of its Palm subsidiary.
By any measure, it seems, Palm has been grossly overvalued.)
Alsop is only a *professional* Early Adopter - it's what he
does for a living. He has a good sense of what consumers
will go for. Not really being a geek, the WAP/i-mode issues
are probably beyond his real interests. That battle will
have to be fought on different terms. Nobody in the
mainstream is going to reject a phone because it "implements
a redundant protocol stack developed in a closed, proprietary
standards process." They'll reject it because they don't
like to use it, or because they've found something even better.
Michael Turner
www.idiom.com/~turner
leap@gol.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrea Hoffmann" <ah@anima.de>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Friday, August 04, 2000 1:06 AM
Subject: (keitai-l) Enough of anti-Europe/WAP, pro-Asia rant?
> > Requisite anti-Europe/WAP, pro-Asia rant has been duly posted.
>
> ok, here comes a not too serious article which sings a different
> song:
>
> I Was Wrong: A Wireless World Is Wonderful
> http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/alsop/2000/04/17/index.html
>
> It doesn't say WAP is better then i-mode but it also doesn't quote
> all those well known complaints about WAP also known as "Why Abuse
> Phones" ;)
>
> Cheers,
> Andrea
> --
> Andrea Hoffmann -- Editor-in-Chief -- hoffmann@westcyber.com
> Japan Mobile Information ---- http://anima.editthispage.com
>
>
Received on Sat Aug 5 13:15:30 2000