On Sat, 1 Nov 2003 wbc@tkk.att.ne.jp wrote:
> The browsing on i-mode is limited to the point of being useless.
I don't think I can agree with that. It is limited, but it's certainly
not useless: I and about thirty million other people use it every day,
for all sorts of things.
> Email is not new.
It is on telephones, outside Japan. And it offers definite advantages
over SMS. For example, if I'm at my computer I can quickly whip off an
e-mail to someone's phone just by typing for a few seconds. That's a lot
nicer than having to grab my phone and much more painfully enter an SMS.
Docomo's e-mail is also much cheaper than SMS, since it's just standard
packet charges. (Though they're not exporting that bit, it seems.)
> Signing up for services will not catch on very well because most
> services are free on the net....
An important part of the i-Mode business model is that services are very
cheap. Sure, I pay for my weather information service, but it's only
about 65 cents per month, so it's not a big deal. And I get a little
game ("Tiny Garden") and stuff, so I'm willing to pay a bit, rather than
use the free one.
If ring tones were $2 each, as they are in the U.S., I wouldn't be
downloading many of them. But when I can get 3 per month for 80 cents
per month, or a dozen per month for $2.50, why not?
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 Sat Nov 1 11:11:12 2003