comment by Paul Eijkemans:
Michael, you seem very knowledgeable on keitai technology. Could you (and
the other members of the group) shed some light on the questions why Western
manufacturers are unable to create the same fancy handsets as the Japanese
manufacturers and why the Japanese manufacturers produce the same
unattractive handsets in the West as all Western manufacturers do?
repsonse from jeff funk:
the answer is very simple. the japanese service providers pay retail outlets
between 30,000 and 40,000 yen when they sign up a new subsriber and about
half that amount when retail outlets upgrade an existing subscriber to new
phones. as you know, US and European service providers pay much smaller
amounts to retail outlets. the larger activation commissions paid by
japanese service providers means that japanese manufacturers can put a lot
more new technologyin a phone than the GSM manufacturers and still end up
with a phone that consumers can obtain for almost free. for example,
japanese phones had lithium ion batteries and ARIB printed circuit board
technology much earlier than GSM phones for exactly this reason. my
forthcoming book from macmillan discusses this and the global handest market
in a great deal of detail.
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu Mar 15 06:52:53 2001