On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Tom Hume wrote:
> On 23 Dec 2003, at 16:12, Gerhard Fasol wrote:
>
> > It's not the carriers who make that choice!!! it's the consumers!
> > they decide what they pay for!
>
> Of course they do; but the choices they can make are decided by the
> operators, who decide which handsets to subsidise, aren't they?
Certainly. But they subsidize all handsets that they put out, and they
put out a lot of handsets. I'd guess that Docomo currently has over
thirty handsets available, and we see probably twenty new handsets every
year. That's a lot of consumer choice.
> Is the Japanese consumer more concerned about specific features (i.e.
> are they demanding 2 megapixel phones) than European consumers then?
They're demanding everything, I think. I definitely want a better camera
for my next phone, but I would give up a QVGA screen, fast Java, Flash,
bar code reading, or a few other features just for that.
> > Regarding the faster gaming, better video support etc.
> > They do that as well!
> > It's not cameras or games and video!
> > It's cameras AND games and video!
Correct. Japanese phones win on pretty much every count. For example,
after using a QVGA display, I could never go back to a 240x180 or
similar display; QVGA is now a required feature for me. But there's
another one that's not in European phones. You could come up with a
list as long as your arm of missing features that are equivalant to the
missing megapixel camera.
> I'm sure you can understand the point I was making: given that Japanese
> telcos can subsidise better handsets than their European counterparts,
> why have they chosen camera quality as a specific feature to subsidise
> when there are others they could put money into?
See above. They have *not* chosen this specific feature; it's one of
many. Sit down with a Docomo catalogue and compare all the features on a
Japanese phone with your typical Nokia.
> I presume that the extra money available to them thanks to their
> higher ARPU is finite and won't let them subsidise every new feature
> that they want...
No, but keep in mind that megapixel cameras were not subsidized right
away; they started with cheap cameras that couldn't even do VGA. It was
only after two or three generations of those that the popularity of a
camera in a keitai was proven and they decided to move to megapixel. And
the two megapixel ones came out only after the 505 series had proved
that megapixel was a desired feature. (Presumably the N and the P did
not sell so well--they were the two without megapixel cameras.)
> >> Particularly when these better quality cameraphones, some of which
> >> can't even transmit photos over mobile networks, don't generate any
> >> revenue for the network themselves?
If someone goes with Docomo instead of AU because they wanted a 2
megapixel camera with a good lens, I'd say that's generating revenue for
Docomo that they wouldn't see otherwise.
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 Dec 26 03:32:09 2003