Whenever we compare two products we need to specify the market. CJS
implied that there are a number of people who are similar to him who are
considering the use of either fixed or wireless internet access from the
home. for people like him, his comparison between wireless and fixed line
internet is probably correct and I recognize that he knows far more than I
will ever know about this issue.
However, when someone uses such an argument to extrapolate to the
overall level of wireless and fixed line services in a country (which was
the point of the article), problems begin to emerge. first, there are many
different kinds of people who have very different needs. and these
different needs cause people to make very different choices. for example,
many people do not think about wireless usage just from the home. they
think about subscribing to wireless services because they spend a lot of
time away from home or the office. these people do not care about the
price of fixed line services because they are not comparing the two. they
subscribe to the wireless service even if they are more expensive or have
slower speeds than the fixed line services.
Second, when commentators/analysts confuse this issue and assume/imply
that these products are substitutes (as the article did), we begin to draw
a number of incorrect conclusions about the potential markets for these
products. we are all aware of how the western press continues to say that
japan's high mobile Internet usage is due to its low PC internet usage when
a careful analysis suggests otherwise. CJS's comments show how easy it is
to fall into this trap; his comments imply they are substitutes when my
guess is that if he were pressed for an opinion, he (and probably Nick May)
would probably say they are not substitutes. in truth, my comments were
aimed less at CJS and more at those readers who still continue to think
that the mobile and PC internets are substitutes.
cheers,
jeff funk
P.S. I believe the calculator example is appropriate because it has much
less performance than the mainframe just as the mobile Internet has much
less performance than the PC internet. And products (PDAs) that are now the
size and price of calculators 20 years ago have the performance of
mainframes 20 years ago.
At 11:58 02/09/20 +0900, you wrote:
>
>well - yes - but no....
>
>using the relationship between a calculator and a mainframe in an
>analogical argument to cast light on the relationship between fixed line
>and wireless does not add clarity to the discussion. The products you
>mention all had different markets - with more or less overlap in each
>case. In many cases the overlap was strictly limited.
>
>Landline and wireless have sufficient overlap in use for the concept of
>substitution to be appropriate in a sense in which the
>mainframe/calculator "substitution" is not. Wireless is a bit iffy for
>receiving faxes, but apart from that it can completely replace landline in
>many, many situations. Of course it can also do a lot more but the concept
>of substitution still applies.
>
>now - if your point is that mobile access using the built in screen of the
>mobile and mobile browsers/is a "new market" in some sense and should not
>be conceived as replacing (displacing would be a better word) desktop
>based internet access, then I take the point. But that is not an access
>method issue, that is display terminal capability - a different point to
>the one I took cjs as making. I took his point to be that internet access
>via a desktop laptop is quite possible and relatively inexpensive through
>wireless - and that being so his wireless access DOES replace his fixed
>line access.
>
>
>Nick
>
>
>keitai-l@appelsiini.net writes:
>>Trying to say that mobile and PC internet usage are substitutes is a
>>complex issue. Scandinavia has the highest fixed line penetration rate in
>>europe and the highest use of SMS per capita. Japan had a higher PC
>>internet usage than all countries in western europe except scandinavia
>>when
>>i-mode services were started in february 1999. And examples of other
>>products are even more interesting. the US was the first country to use
>>mainframes, minicomputers, PCs, calculators, and PDAs although all of
>>these
>>products could be construed as substitutes. Japan, the US, and probably
>>also europe were early users of portable music players in spite of having
>>a
>>high penetration rate of home stereo systems. these and other examples
>>(there are many many others) suggest that these products are not simple
>>substitutes for each other but actually represent new markets. for those
>>of
>>you who really want to understand some of these dynamics, read "the
>>innovators dilemma" by clayton christensen, his other articles, or my
>>home
>>page for discussions of "disruptive technologies."
>>jeff funk
>>kobe university
>
>
>This mail was sent to address funk@rose.rokkodai.kobe-u.ac.jp
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>
Received on Fri Sep 20 07:34:29 2002