(keitai-l) Re: International Usage

From: Benjamin <bkml_at_mac.com>
Date: 07/06/02
Message-Id: <542546B8-909D-11D6-9D9A-003065FB21DC@mac.com>
On Friday, July 5, 2002, at 10:27 , Dan Bauer wrote:

> Samsung has an incredible (by european standards) color GSM phone, the
> T100 - and I must tell you apart from the lack of the imode button (but
> it is an 'I' in the shape of an @ ;-) you would not know the difference
> - 4000 colour display, great user interface, and polyphonic ringtones...

In respect of the topic "International Usage" ...

That phone won't work in Japan at all - it's for GSM only.

> They are Korean!

The phone won't work in Korea either.

However, it shows you that the Koreans have been a lot smarter than the 
Japanese building a viable export business for themselves by opening up 
to international standards. Samsung has entered the GSM market based on 
their repetition and market leadership in the CDMA market, which was 
only possible because Korea ditched their domestic cellular system for 
CDMA in the mid 90s. In fact this was motivated by the intent to build 
an export industry.

These days, the Koreans are a lot smarter than the Japanese about a lot 
of those things.

> when people see my basic (by Japanese standards) phone they are in shock
> - it's a bit weird for me after having used one of the test foma video
> phones more than a year ago, to see people in awe over a
> Porsche-designed clam shell phone.

Well, when I show my Sanyo C405 CDMA phone in Europe, people are amazed 
to see how slim it is (in return it is almost twice as tall as the 
smaller European GSM phones). They are even more amazed when I take the 
battery off - because it's so tiny and light.

But also, when I show my Nokia 8110 in Japan, people are just as amazed 
by its beautiful functional and compact design. And they are amazed when 
I show them the SIM card and explain what it is good for as they are 
when they hear that this phone works in about 400 networks/150 countries.

There is no such thing as "Wow, they have all the cool stuff in <fancy 
place> and they have no cool stuff in <some other place>". People are 
amazed about the things that they haven't seen before, things that they 
don't have. This is because what the Europeans are good at, the Japanese 
are terrible at and likewise what the Japanese are good at, the 
Europeans until very recently have been terrible at.

Western phone makers can learn as much from Japanese and Korean 
manufacturers as the Japanese and Koreans can learn from the Westerners.

rgds
benjamin
Received on Sat Jul 6 08:01:38 2002