>
>Not sometimes. The former is with a public mandate and supervision - the
>latter is without. The difference thus, is not sometimes but always. And
>that difference matters.
So there is an EFFECTIVE difference sometimes (in the sense that they
sometimes have different effects) . And the difference SOMETIMES matters
(although "mattering" is a somewhat personal thing. "Matters to you",
clearly. "Matters to the consumer" - not always - no.
If not, demonstrate.
>
>
>
>Glad you are using the plural here. Notably, two of those systems are
>open standards.
>
>Unfortunately CDMA has been limited by the fact that it's spectrum
>allocation had to fit into the PDC spectrum. Despite that CDMA has been
>a success, which favours my pro-open-standards argument.
No it does not. You are terribly terribly keen to draw enthymatic
(enthymematic?) conclusions. CDMA was a success because it brought
something new to the party (decent voice). You must demonstrate that a
closed-standard solution would not have been similarly successful before
you are entitled to make the claim you do.
> PHS, despite
>some set backs in Japan, has been a tremendous success worldwide and
>because it is an open standard, again favours my argument.
See above. It does nothing of the sort. The fact that you admit it has had
setbacks in Japan just as much suggests that an "open standard" model is
not always appropriate.
>
>
>
>
>While you seem to be certain that all Japanese (including business
>users) prefer colour screens over other things that the Japanese market
>clearly lacks, I am saying, let the kids have the toys, but not at the
>cost of more serious users for whom a phone is nothing but a tool.
The market has been driven by the kids. Where we are reflects that. Take
away a large amount of functionality that lots of people use (the elderly
benefit from the crisp screens in particular) for a small benefit that few
people would use - and which is available to them at a price if they
really need it.
>
>
>Just for fun, ask any Japanese you meet within the next month or so
>
>- If they could choose between a DoCoMo handset with all the features
>they are known for or a PHS handset with all the limits they are known
>for plus its a little more bulky (say 25 grams), but the PHS handset
>could still be used overseas.
>
>You would find that there is a very steep curve with increasing age in
>favour of international roaming ability, starting at about age 24, 25.
"ask the people you meet" - well -for a Japan living keitai-l list member,
I suspect this is not a representative sample.
This is a figures game isn't it. Do you have any figures?
>
>You can also explain the concept of SIM cards and again, although not as
>steep, there is a clear trend favouring SIM cards and interchangeble
>phones with increasing age.
as above. Are you sure you carefully explained what they could NOT have?
>
>The Japanese consumers over 30 are clearly under-represented in the
>portfolio that mobile phone manufacturers offer in Japan today. Toy
>phones are a principle trend in Europe too, but there you can at least
>buy a number of business phones.
By "toy phones" I guess you mean one's that can't do roaming? Why
characterise them as toys? Your pet subject is roaming - I simply do not
believe it is as relevant as you claim to the vast majority of people. Why
characterise a phone on which you can do personal banking and the like as
a toy? Contempt for the consumer?
>However, in Japan, nobody is putting any further thought into this
>because it has traditionally been that you buy what is on the shelf -
>the people who stock the shelves certainly know better what I should buy
>and I don't want to stick out asking for something that sticks out of
>what seems to be the crowd.
Oh bollocks. "The customer is God" (Or "God is our customer" as a local
combini has it...) Perhaps people don't ask for such phones because they
are fairly happy with what they have got.
> While this kind of thinking is weakening, it
>is stronger in age groups above 30 and increases with age. In other
>words, those folks who have been educated not to mock up are those whose
>tastes are less represented on Japanese shelves.
Youth has driven the market. But if you look on the shelves now, you will
see phones aimed at the partially sighted and the elderly, with huge
fonts. Hardly looks like a market sector that is being ignored.
>But that doesn't mean they wouldn't buy differently if what they like
>was on offer.
Very true - but that is not an earth shattering conclusion. We have
established that Japanese phones cannot roam easily because of design
decisions that were taken at an early stage. You claim that those design
decsions were brain dead and protectionist. This is Japan, I would be
surprised if they were anything else. But THEN you claim that an open
source solution would have been beneficial from the start AND YOU HAVE
SIMPLY NOT DEMONSTRATED THAT.
It is not enough to point out areas where tradeoffs have been made that.
You have to demonstrate that we would have an equal or superior system in
Japan (from the consumer's point of view) had we taken the European route.
Pointing out that certain consumer needs are not being met is also not
enogh - the consumers whose needs you claim are going unmet were the most
technophobic in the first place and thus not driving the domestic market.
You talk of Utopia, then show us Europe. Ah, "Brave New World that has
such services in it!".
As a consumer I look at the "building" (the service, from start to finish
- all components of it) while you are focussing on the bricks. You
maintain that some of those bricks are very inferior - and that the
building is in the wrong place. Possibly so. But when we look around at
"buildings" that have been construced with the bricks you recommend, they
seem awfully inferior to what we have. Will the "building" fall down in
the long run? Possibly, but as that dear old sweetie JMK put it, "in the
long run we are all dead". Nice it would be if we could prize some of the
bricks out and replace them with stronger ones - but we can't, usually.
How long will it be before cheap disposable paper phones take off and the
whole roaming debate simply fades away?
There is an "Open source fallacy*" which is to look at an established
environment and say "it would have been much better had it been open
source." But while one can "rebuild" something as open source (as Linux
has done) - replicate Unix, Gui's etc -that is quite different from
creating something as open source from the beginning. It does happen - but
it is very rare and Linux is most definitely NOT an example.
you wrote:
>Actually, Curt, I am quite suprised to read those arguments coming from
>you. Transposed into the world of IT, this can only mean that IBM should
>reign with their proprietary mainframes in the server market, DEC (now
>Compaq or HP) with VMS in the mid-range market and Microsoft with
>Windoze in the desktop market. Big muscle proprietary technology
>companies should call the shots because they have the power to go over
>anybody else's interests. Open systems and Unix should have no place
>because it is too much of a hassle to bring all those folks under one
>hat. In the early beginnings of open systems this was the argument why
>IT managers bought IBM mainframes and DEC VAXes. I remember that. I
>remember the arguments I had - those arguments were not essentially
>different from today's argument. In the long run though open systems and
>standards agreed between myriads of parties are now winning the upper
>hand in the world of IT. How long do you think it is going to take
>before Linux (or whatever other open source desktop Unix) will replace
>Windoze ?
This describes a move FROM a proprietary world to a mixed proprietory open
source one. Yes - beneficial. But note that 1) the fact that the world
existed at all was down to the proprietory companies. 2) They still call a
lot of the shots. 3) open source still only has a "place" in that world.
Could open source and standards have made that world in the first place? I
doubt it very much.
And we may as well repeat here that the major Japanese companies DO use
the most open and available standards there are - variations on html and
email.
With regards to your Houdini escape act in regards to using a Mac
(previous email), it was entertaining enough in itself, but that fact that
one can run multiple operating systems on a Mac does not make it "open"
and the fact that Darwin is open-source does not make MacOS X open. Or do
you use Darwin from the command line to access your mac.com account and
read keitai-l?
Macs are "managed systems" in which the whole is so much greater than the
parts (which were often rather flaky - the innards of MacOS 7,8,9 for
example).
Quite a bit like the Japanese keitai environment - crappy in parts, but
viewed as a whole, the best in the world...
*(using the term "fallacy" loosely)
Nick
>
Received on Sun Jun 16 17:25:54 2002