Hi Timothy,
The point I tried to raise was not about any technical shortcoming, if
this is
what you mean.
FOMA in Japan works very fine, exactly like your NEC (from Japan as well).
And I agree with Andrea about the interest of having video communication.
My point was that video phone
1) is unable to bring to Carriers the rise in MOU or ARPU dreamed of
2) will have to overcome highly underestimated social / behavioural hurdles
before going mainstream (which I also think will happen)
I remember the early days of mobile frenzy when all carriers were planning
to launch the fantastic video phone by 2000/2001. We now have two
situations :
- carriers rushing to launch first, at a loss (like "3"). This is a
blessing for the
consumer (low prices, when the service works) AND for other carriers
("3" is educating the market for a service all carriers will eventually
offer)
- carriers slowing down their plan to avoid launching a service that would
disappoint the consumer and would damage their efforts for a few months
or years
DoCoMo wanted to be first and paid the price : the service from 2001 to
2003 could
easily be called a large-scale beta-test. Manufacturers were so unhappy
to work on
FOMA with DoCoMo (when they could have worked on sexy camera-phones or
overseas markets) that bigD offered to support handset development last
year.
3G video phone is a nice example of "Second Mover Advantage"...
As for the "chara-den", your furry avatar moves only when you press buttons
and has a very limited number of expressions. Also, is it considered good
manners to not show your face when your partner shows his/hers ?
In the Internet world, it is not always well accepted. Mobile manners
can be different, though.
A solution could be to use face-recognition to animate a character or a more
human-like avatar, which would provide much flexible expressions.
Maybe just a matter of time before this happens...
-- Benjamin
Timothy J Mckinnon wrote:
>I guess it doesnt work yet.... IN JAPAN!
>
>I am on the three 3g network, and it is seemless beauty. Anytime I make a
>voice call, i can press the button on the right and make a vidphone call, or
>the button on the left and make a voice (radio) call. OF course I can call
>up radios with my TV, but their radio capability prevents them seeing the
>vid stream.,
>
>I would have thought Video would be less intrusive publicly, as a picture
>can say a thousand words silently, but radio silence is well.... just
>that...
>
>I have an NEC e616v Clamshell Type phone. Dual camera, SonyDuo stick on a 3G
>network in Australia.
>
>regs
>TIMBO
>
>
>
Received on Tue Oct 26 08:16:46 2004