On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Marc Printz wrote:
> Its all about perception. No matter whether or not a consumer would have to
> look up 'proprietary' in a dictionary: if he/she gets told by the non-i-mode
> guys that he might be following a doomed crowd then he/she may think twice
> (compare Betamax and VHS, which was of course incompatible beyond just
> perception). For most Europeans I would guess i-mode is perceived as that
> very different stuff coming over from Japan, no matter how justified that
> view is. Or i-mode is simply meaningless to them.
Well, light weight, colour screens, fancy graphics and e-mail might
help sway the user. :-)
The real question is probably compatability with what your friends
and co-workers are using. Betamax wouldn't have died if you could
have bought one that allowed you to record and play VHS tapes as
well. If these i-Mode phones allow you to exchange SMS (which is
about the only data function that the non-i-Mode phones have),
what's to care that your phone is different? It's not different
enough to make a difference, as it were.
If the phones themselves don't support SMS, well, a gateway is not
hard to create.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
Received on Fri Mar 15 08:34:21 2002