well, the japanese operators are to an extent taking advantage of their
closed market here, locking their phones out to you have to pay to
download a chaku-uta that could be just beamed over from your PC.
in the US one of the operators got slapped by the monopoly commission for
disabling features on a device (was it verizon and bluetooth?). here its
just expected. as long as theres no alternative people will just keep
paying. 70% of KDDI content fees are chaku-uta.
the domestic devices are obviously controlled specs, so its not like it
seems like anything is "missing". its just when the carriers go to great
lengths to take features -out- that the situation becomes apparent.
this has resulted in very profitable businesses, which fortunately is
creating a great platform for more and more original services.
/dc
On Mon, 16 May 2005 14:53:58 +0900, Gerhard Fasol
<fasol@eurotechnology.com> wrote:
> > The situation regarding smartphones in Japan is REALLY...
>
> Depends on your definition of "smartphones"...
>
> Don't forget: the two leading Japanese operators
> KDDI/AU and DoCoMo are in the business of making
> profits. And they do extremely well at that:
> KDDI/AU's profits just increased 71% and they'll
> invest about US$ 4 Billion in network upgrades.
>
> They do this by carefully listening and understanding
> MAINSTREAM JAPANESE CUSTOMERS, and giving these
> mainstream Japanese customers what they want
> and pay for. That's very down-to-earth. If you
> want to know what Japanese people on the street
> want you can just ask them. I do that everyday,
> because we need this information for our
> customers.
[ excessive quoting removed by moderator ]
Received on Mon May 16 12:16:32 2005