After taking a really good look at DoCoMo's pricing plan, I am truly curious as to who is expected to use FOMA, and for what.
Applications like video eat up the packets and yen, and yet seem to be mostly useful and attractive to consumers, who probably won't pay the premium (except while in their car at midnight, just dumped by the girl they thought they were taking home, with a box of tissues and a FOMA with a very nasty video site in the directory...well, you get the idea).
What real advantage does the handset offer businesses? Most of the western media covering DoCoMo claim that the service is aimed at business. NOT! Businesses in Japan don't, for the most part, lead in adoption of new technologies. Those girlies Juergen referred to do that. Bigger question is what are they going to be doing with FOMA? Will it be a profit center? (Use your imagination) A social medium? What? Should be really interesting.
DoCoMo has already tried marketing upmarket handsets (something in an 8XX series, if I recall), and sold very few. I asked the chick (yes, it is a sexist term, but they definitely qualify) in the DoCoMo shop what the advantage was that I would want to pay 20,000 more yen for, and she couldn't give me a good answer. The tech specs didn't help much more. As a status symbol, a FOMA phone will be invaluable to me if I am at a conference in the US or Europe, and whip out a video model. The oohs and ahhs that Andrea heard at the ringtone concert for her cool chaku melo would be nothing compared to what I could get for a FOMA handset. But realistically, as a status symbol in Japan, it will have alot less cachet.
I have asked hundreds of people what sorts of uses they might put videophones to, and received a fair amount of negative feedback to even using the videophones. Compared to Americans, most societies are quieter and less likely talk so much about themselves , but I would say the Japanese are an extreme example of this. Someone told me, and all of you in Tokyo will probably believe this, that the Japanese address system is purposely designed to confuse people who don't live in the area, forcing them to ask around, thereby giving the people in the area a chance to look them over, and judge whether they posed any danger. The telephone is, similarly, purposely designed to limit communication to the oral-aural sort. If you want more, you will have to meet in person, and get looked over. If I am completely off-base in my depiction of many Japanese as rather private people, let me know.
To image-concious people, and many Japanese would fit this description, always being in the view of a camera when speaking to someone seems completely unattractive. Which completely does not mean that tons of people won't try it anyway...
Anyway, gotta go talk to my (ehem) friend, who is now giving a multimedia performance, live on my phone's screen....
-Nik Frengle
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Received on Thu Sep 6 20:08:00 2001