Victor Pikula wrote:
>
> As to clarify a bit: Maybe the influence DoCoMo has or had over its
> suppliers (hard and soft) was essential for i-mode becoming a runaway
> success with consumers. In the very first design stage of a
> product/service, maybe it is good to have some strict design rules
> that everyone involved in production adheres to in order to
> guarantee user-oriented consistency... see Wintel and the PC. Other
> software and hardware makers followed their design specs.
The memory of the 199x NHK morning business report, which was my
first exposure to what NTTdocomo had in the pipeline, is still with
me. Based on those gen. 1 phones, I did not think iMode (and
I don't believe they even had this name for the service yet) was
going to be a hit. The NTTdocomo guided phone designs were
klunkey and unimaginative, as one might expect from NTT. I would
argue that it took a bit of de-coupling from NTTdocomo before
these phones started to reach an acceptable level of fit and
finish. It may have been that these better phones were in the
pipeline and NTT just wanted to get a working demo out the door,
but I think it's more likely that the phone was the prefered
NTTdocomo product offering and it took actual sales data to
demonstrate how successful phones designed by committee are.
[ Need archives? How to unsubscribe? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu Sep 20 21:08:22 2001