(keitai-l) Re: Small Phones Not Popular in Japan?

From: Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net>
Date: 06/14/05
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.62.0506141138020.23002@angelic.cynic.net>
On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, Gerhard Fasol wrote:

> If they were not popular there would not be more and more Premini's.

I don't see any more.

> "basic funtionality": the Tu-Ka-S phone was a huge success and
> put TuKa back on track...

Huh? Have you seen the *size* difference between those phones? Not to
mention that the Premini has about ten times the functionality.

The Premini, otherwise known as the SO213i, is most certainly *not* a
reduced functionality phone. It's got all the standard functionality
of the 2[01]x series. True, it's missing a camera (standard with 25x
series) and Java (standard with the 5xx series), but at the time the
phone was introduced it was a premium feature.

> That DoCoMo phones are given away for zero YEN, does not mean
> that they are not worth anything, or that DoCoMo could not
> sell them. It's part of the wild battle for market share.

So how did Docomo increase their market share by giving an existing
subscriber a free phone?

Maybe--just maybe--it's their policy to do that for people who come in
with broken phones in order to keep them from changing. But how likely
was I to change anyway?

> You have to look at the bigger picture to understand this - after all,
> if a guy gets a Premini for 0YEN and then pays YEN7000/month to DoCoMo
> that's better for DoCoMo than if he gets a Vodafone or TuKa phone for
> zero YEN and pays YEN 6000/month to Tuka or Vodafone from then on....
> DoCoMo has the money back for the "0-YEN" phone in no time at all!

One more time:

     1. I was an existing (for four years!) DoCoMo subscriber.
     2. This is my third phone this year, and sixth since I started.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   +81 90 7737 2974

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Received on Tue Jun 14 05:45:04 2005