True - but that opens up a whole potential new Pandoras box for the
carriers. How do they "control" the wifi channel? e.g. If wifi becomes
pervasive, and phones do wifi. how long before VOIP over wifi becomes
an option (I know there are latency issues here...). Adding wifi to the
phone makes it capable of lots of things that are outside the carriers
"revenue reach" - it basically becomes a glorified pda. If my phone
does wifi and pda, but is "closed" for VOIP, I am more likely to move
to a pda/ipod that DOES voip, will wifi connect seamlessly with my
desktop, etc - it's a small jump.
I think as soon as we accept a wifi download, it does not matter much
whether it is directly to the phone or not - it open up those download
to a whole range of devices that are not controlled by the phone
company. And as soon as THAT happens they are potentially marginalised,
revenue wise.
They also have to answer some crucial questions: - what happens to the
song if I drop the keitai down the loo? Can I back it up? How do I
register the handset for that song? How do I re-register another
handset, etc etc. At some point they need a DRM system that will "just
work" seamlessly with desktop OS's - like real has with (who?
Erricson?) and apple has with Moto.
If you look at apple, they have most of the jigsaw - they just need a
wifi capable ipod... (Adding wifi to an ipod would not be a "threat" to
apple). Docomo et al are no-where near that... They have a low storage
playback device with a narrow band (even Foma, for downloading songs)
connection.
Nick
On Oct 24, 2004, at 3:11 PM, Curt Sampson wrote:
> I agree that the using a cellular network is probably too slow and
> expensive for this kind of download, but one could give a pretty good
> illusion of the same thing with your idea of doing the download through
> WiFi, with the addition of putting WiFi in the phone itself, as Docomo
> has already done for one product.
Received on Sun Oct 24 11:57:33 2004