Yes, I agree. The walkman analogy was far off, but was offered to make a
point. I think that consumers are just not used to small screens for
video. There will always be a trade off with convenience (carrying a
notebook PC in a briefcase or Win CE 3.0 vs. carrying the keitai in a
pocket). As someone just recently mentioned, they carry a keitai with
rudimentary PDA functionality instead of the "heavy" Palm device with
all the PDA functionality you could ever want, simply for convenience.
Obviously screen size was not as important as portability for this
consumer, and I would venture to say many others feel the same way. The
market will see this trend, too, when video telephony hits the market.
I don't necessarily think people will be watching full-length video on
the tiny screen, but for those who want access all the time, the
trade-off seems fine.
Maybe Japanese consumers can more easily adapt to smaller devices
(notebook PCs being 46% of the market vs. half that for the US market).
Space-constraints are an issue, but it still shows they can adapt more
readily. I have colleagues come over from the US still toting 11-lb
full-size notebooks. Some are starting to wish they had the slim-notes,
and are slowly showing that they would trade in that 14-in screen for a
lighter, smaller device. Again, same trend will likely be seen with
successive iterations from keyboard PDA to pen-based PDAs to keitais.
It will happen, but will take time.
This is what I've noticed in the passed when gauging consumer behavior
and purchasing patterns, at least in the Japanese market.
KOW
Made in DNA wrote:
>
> > Tape Walkman - CD Walkman MD players - MP3 players.
>
> While I tend to agree with you, watching content on the big screen and
> watching it on a make-you-go-blind keitai screen are a far cry from tape
> walkmans and MP3 players, because the technology for audio devices got
> smaller as did the media, but in the case of keitai screens, they are
> getting bigger... for a reason. People don't like to look at small
> screens.
>
> Made in DNA
> --
> Moped Ronin: Nooper-Free Japan Zone
> http://sites.netscape.net/MopedRonin/
>
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Received on Wed Aug 8 07:32:19 2001