(keitai-l) Re: Mobile Phones Must Die?

Weighing into this rather late, but if anyone's still listening:

I think Ren's point is well-taken: while keyboards and big screens
and mice are better for the trained user with easy access to them,
using this as a rationale for the rest of the world sort of a "let
them eat cake" argument.  Millions of philipinos are thumbtyping
daily because it saves money on celphone bills - and these are
the *rich* ones!

For some economies, delivery of text might not even be the major
event.  Images and voice-mail snippets would probably work better
many parts of the world.  If I were a Japanese company in the
celphone business, I'd be busy experimenting, trying to determine
the effect of various ratios of handset ownership on certain economies
in Asia, and working out interfaces that don't require much skill or
education.  We already know what happens when one person in
a thousand gets a hold of wireless voice connectivity out in the bush
in some benighted country - they sell people the classic "reach out
and touch someone" service of phoning your cousin or sister in
Lagos or Calcutta.  But what happens when you bring basic e-business
capability to, say, one person in 50, in a place like Bangladesh?  There
might be some hidden third-world productivity goldmine in this - if
only in improving on-the-ground coordination for dodging graft while
goods are in transit....

----- Original Message -----
From: "Renfield Kuroda" <Renfield.Kuroda@msdw.com>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 7:13 PM
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: Mobile Phones Must Die?


> Several popular i-mode/mobile magazines have done (arguable
> non-rigorous) studies/conests, asking various people to input a give
> message and timing them. Often the winner came in at 80 words per
> minute. And of course slang, abbreviations, and emoji help shorten
> messages, and as has been mentioned Japanese is very good at
> communicating alot of information in short sentences  because of the use
> of kanji.
>
> My point is, the very Western attitude that QWERTY keyboards are somehow
> inherently better for someone who's never used any input device is
> silly. And the fact that there are an overwhelmingly larger number of
> 10keys in use in the world versus QWERTY keyboards means that
> established Western market leaders need to wake up and accept the fact
> that, in a couple of short years, the predominant Internet device will
> NOT be a PC with QWERTY keyboard, but a cellphone with a 10key, and the
> businesses that are not prepared to accept this reality and tailor
> hardware and services to their potential customers will lose.
>
> r e n
>
>
> Stephen Carter wrote:
>
> > Do we really know how proficient they are? I suspect people don't input
very
> > much with the 10-key. Perhaps if it does become the only way many people
> > input, then we'll develope some kind of short hand expression like the
old
> > telegraph language.
>
>
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> e-business technology | engineering & strategy | wireless
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