Darren,
>f900it has bluetooth. as i said before, it is a silly that docomo have
>ignored bluetooth. I remember a report from somebody, cant remember the
>persons name, that said the reason docomo weren't to keen on bluetooth
>is that the MAIN use on handsets is for hands free. As you know, hands
>free is not popular in Japan - the article guessed that this was a
>cultural thing.
I did not realise that DCM had any Bluetooth-compatible phones. My mistake.
>exactly, "two years ago". you aren't even at European level for 3g. I
>think you'll find that the most expensive 3g license in the world was
>that of the United Kingdom, home of vodafone.
I don't exactly understand the comment: We are far ahead of any European coverage levels that I am aware of, and I don't know what you are implying about 3G licenses. When I say 'we', I refer to Vodafone K.K., to which Newbury is not home.
>see above and 2 years behind. still building, not built. I got foma
>coverage when i went to the top of mount aso! the docomo coverage maps
>said i shouldn't have had coverage for at least another 50km - and that
>was over a year ago.
A year ago I was at Shiobara (Hunter Mountain, if you are interested) with my Sanyo 801SA, and had a video conversation with a colleague in Tokyo. Have you actually used our handsets? Certainly, there are some areas where coverage is not complete, but I confess to being confused at your seeming bias.
>you, as in vodafone, got ahead not because you offered a better service,
>or that you are now emulating the "3" network model of dropping prices
>to attract customers. You got where you are today thanks mainly to one
>man, Sir Chris Gent. Where it not for his astonishing business awareness
>and ability to borrow astronomical sums of money, vodafone would be no
>more than 02.
I think, Darren, that we are having a different conversation: I was clearly talking about J-Phone, not the Vodafone Group.
>>Who was first with e-mail connectivity? Who rolled out the
>> first mobile content service in Japan?
>>
>> Which company came up with Sha mail? Which is the only company to
>> build a successful pre-paid business in Japan? You guessed it:
>> J-Phone/Vodafone.
>are you so sure about your lists of first there? even so its not that
>impressive really! who is the company that copies docomo? you guessed it
>- vodafone. there are too many examples to justify my argument.vfl, your
>sales brochures, vgs j2me.
Yep, Darren, I am sure of my list, though I have to admit that 'successful' in terms of pre-paid means that the company derives substantial profits from it. DoCoMo is a very innovative company, which I think I clearly stated. I would be interested in any of your examples of where we copied DoCoMo, but know that internally we try to avoid anything like that, and I think that the user experience of Vodafone Live! is uniqe to Vodafone. This line of argument, with little except impressions, feelings, etc., is not really productive, so I will end it here.
>that's the problem though, it isn't really new(s) anymore. Its been
>floating around for at least a year.
>vodafone is great, im British, an ex-employee of their head office, i
>want them to succeed, i really do. but i would be so overly confident
>that voda wont pull out of Japan. they have done it before in other
>countries where they flopped. when i company is based so heavily on debt
>as vodafone, the future can never be certain.
So, you want them (us) to succeed...I guess I could ask how anything you have ever said on this list about Vodafone reflects that desire, but...
So, just to go further, you are saying that VFKK, which accounts for roughly 20% of net group profits is a flop for Vodafone Group? Hmm...not sure I see that. Your comments about Vodafone debt are *way* off-base: Debt, according to our annual report, is about 14 billion pounds, which is offset by about 5.5 billion pounds in liquid assets, bringing net debt down to 8.4 billion pounds, one of the lowest in the business. You are right: Sir Gent was a genius, and his genius mostly lay in financing the acquisitions using Vodafone's own stock.
I would be interested in any countries where Vodafone have pulled out of: I have not been working for this company long enough to remember such cases.
Best Regards,
Nik
Received on Mon Feb 14 11:49:48 2005