Cellphone vendors could exit business if economy remains bleak - Page 2

You can accuse him of being 'annoying' (to some, anyway), but accusing him of trolling for arguing over what's "full-featured" seems a bit beyond the pale, Mel. And you're a mod-guy now anyway, not a loose cannon.

What's got your dander up today, anyway? From reading your other posts, you seem to trying to lay the smack down pretty hard today.


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Exactly. Apple was smart to make the features that they did offer very solid. Just read Pogue's review of the Storm to see what happens when you rush to market with an unfinished product.

You might as well compare it to cable television, or satellite. You still need to buy a new Tv, and get to pay a good deal per month for the feed.

What's the difference, not much.

The point is that things change, and wht we didn't consider at all at one time, becomes not only important, but required.

That happened to cellphones at first, and now, at an ever increasing pace, it's happening with smartphones and data plans.

It's not beyond the pale.

When someone states over and again, the same exact reason for saying something, without actually giving some good logical reasons for saying it, either the poster is simply trying to get people to respond angrily, or is trolling. We've seen it before. I questioned whether he was trolling by giving the two reasons why he might be saying what he is, in the way he is.

So sure, I get my dander up when that happens.

He hasn't made a single argument in his favor, while some others have, even though they are on the side of the argument he's on.

Exactly!

Several reviewers have questioned whether anyone actually tried to do any real typing on that keyboard. They've also questioned why it's so amazingly buggy, even though its release was held up to get rid of bugs.

So what you are saying, for the features it provides, they are provided fully?

Hmm, how is that Bluetooth support going these days?

Can't say where I heard it but most definitely Android will appear on netbooks next year. Android and iPhone OS are "similar" in that they are finger-based interfaces for computing with minimal overhead and are synced to a parent computer for the most part.

You see, that's the problem with your remarks.

You just don't understand the concept. And you also refuse to respond to specific statements made by others, such as mine.

That's why it seems as though you may be trolling.

As I have already said, from the definition you guys are making, every phone in existence is full featured, which they are not, and neither is the iPhone. It doesn't implement BT fully, it doesn't implement GSM features fully.

No, it's the impossible definition that YOU are making that's the problem. You expect that every feature that may exist be incorporated in a device before it can be called full featured, even though that's not the definition of what full featured has ever meant.

You are playing semantic games, at best.

Yes other phones are subsidised, and you will find that you pay less for the subsidised model, than the non-subsidised, because you are locked into a contract, or locked to that network for a certain time with a subsidised model.

A lot of that demand was artificial, the US$ was at a massive low at the time, Apple did their usual trick of selling cheap in the US market. You would have been silly not to purchase them in the US at that time, heck I brought an iPod and a MacBook in the US and saved a few hundred euro on them. Also, the reason they stopped things was they were losing money on them, AT&T were giving them a constant revenue stream at the time.

Just passin' through:


Sure, things like MMS are just fringe features that only a few crackpots would want and... oh wait. It's exactly the opposite of that:

A recent survey by the CTIA – The Wireless Association reports... [that] cell phones are being used more for purposes like capturing and sending pictures and other multimedia messages, with more than 5.6 billion MMS recorded in the first half of 2008. This amount is equivalent to the number of MMSes sent in the whole year of 2007.

http://www.techshout.com/mobile-phon...e-users-in-us/

And that's just in the US. Imagine how many TENS OF BILLIONS of pic/multimedia messages get sent worldwide each year. And, if the US in any indication, it's accelerating.



Not sure that's true. Check out the chart below... RIM's been increasing in marketshare too, as has HTC. Though both will feel the pinch of the economic downturn.






I think that's a bit of hype. Maybe in the very long-term, that's possible, but in the short- or medium-term, I doubt it. Why?

Well, a few reasons. One- go ask a cellphone salesman how many ppl want a 'FREE' cellphone. Lots do. Of course, it isn't really 'free', it's being subsidized by the service contract, but Joe Average does not grok that. So when the iPhone is available for ZERO dollars, maybe then the dubmphone market will be on its' legs... but even then, it probably isn't completely, because of portability. And simplicity.

That same big screen that makes the iPhone so lovely for so many things also makes it quite wide, and tall. Sure, it's thin, but thin does not equal small, all by itself (though Steve seems to think so). I have a midrange flip phone that I can easily stick in the my jeans change pocket. The iPhone won't fit in there, nor do most competing smartphones. Some ppl just like small, and smartphones are inherently 'not small', thanks to the big screen.

Then there's the fact that some ppl just find smartphones intimidating, and really do want a simple phone that "just makes calls". Or at least a phone that looks simple, even if it can do other things. Sure, that's mostly older folks, but hey, they buy phones and service contracts too.

So, I wouldn't expect the dumbphone market to go away just yet.



I tend to agree. Even with a nice BT earpiece, you can't 'just whip out' a netbook the way you can a phone. Portability, again.



Yes, but there is another definition of "full-featured": Having the common features that ppl EXPECT a cellphone to have. MMS definitely falls into that category.

Now, some other things that the iPhone doesn't have, like video-recording, cut-copy-paste, uncrippled bluetooth (last I checked), high-quality camera, etc don't necessarily fall into that category. But even then, some would argue that those things are expected on a high-end phone, which I guess the iPhone should be considered to be.

Our own US standards concerning that may be a tad sketchy. After all, we're not exposed to all of the neat-o high-end phones that the Euros, Japanese, and South Koreans are. So perhaps our viewpoints are tad bit skewed in that regard.

In any case, as I said before... just passin' through.


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I am not the one that started it, Daniel said it was full featured not me, if it is a game, maybe he shouldn't have added that part to the article, after all looking at the Apple Dictionary...

Full - not lacking or omitting anything; complete
Feature - A distinctive attribute or aspect of something

The iPhone is definitely not full featured

So you are taking into account the contract price are you?

Or for locked pre-pays, the amount you must spend before they unlock it for you?

You are being sarcastic, right? I italicized aren't in my original response for a reason. I understand that the iPhone is not really $200, but only $200 with a two year contract. In the U.S., the vast majority of people buy subsidized phones.


Selling "cheap?" I don't understand how the original iPhone priced at $500-$600 was "cheap." Don't know why you bring up Macs, which aren't subsidized. Apple wasn't losing much money on the original iPhone because it was hardly subsidized at all, hence the high upfront cost and lower monthly fees. Now the iPhone has a lower upfront cost and higher monthly fees to compensate, like virtually all cell phones, smart or "dumb."

You have to kind of ignore, JT-Fanboy.
He's a Nokia fan with phone envy, and can't get over the success Apple is having.
Let's all just agree that Apple is the only phone company taking the industry by storm, causing all the others to react to Apples product by changing thier own features. And Apple is doing it with with a phone that really sucks and is woefully low on the features anyone would want and totally overpriced. Of course, the competitors for the iPhone have to be really bad, if with all these problems the iPhone is still growing like crazy and the lower cost competitors are getting slayed.....

Absolutely. This is clearly inevitable. (why on earth is anyone on here disagreeing with this point)

No, not trolling, not trying to get people to respond angrily, just asking if people are going to write articles, they are least try and cut down the emotive aspects of it, and just put in the facts.


Yes I have.

Not being articulate does not necessarily equal trolling, Mel.

If he'd said "Apple is teh suxxorz", then I'd be whacking him upside the head alongside of you.

Basically, you're doing the Internet equiv of shouting "Get off my lawn, you stupid kids!". Though, to be fair, that has always been the 'Mel way'.

I just think as a mod, you could be a tad bit more understanding 'bout it. When mods says certain things, it's perceived a bit differently.

/me done on this issue

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And the US are a small player in the GSM market.



The original model wasn't subsidised.

Which of course I wouldn't do, as I own a number of Macs, and iPods and are happy with them. Not screaming from the roof top happy like a number of people on this site, but happy none the less.

Ugh, this is one of those cases where people say "you know what I mean."

You know what Dan meant (or you should have). Most cell manufacturers sell a plethora of phones, some "dumb" phones, some full-featured smartphones with big keyboards taking up space for a screen, some full-featured touchscreen models. Apple's simplified business model of offering a unified, full-featured touchscreen smartphone has shown itself to be very successful. I don't see how his statement was "emotive" in the least.

I've looked around, there doesn't seem to be much information on how many MMS messages are sent world wide. Their is more information on SMS, but still difficult to find current and accurate world wide numbers.

What I could find was still eclipsed by email. Its estimated that 62 billion emails are sent every day world wide.




Anecdotally. Looking at the commercials carriers run these days. They are all for smartphones, or full QWRTY keyboard phones. I think these will quickly replace keypad phones.

Sure, but the rest of the world isn't 100% unsubsidized, anti-contract either.

You also seem to be ignoring my original point: the first generation iPhone was $500-$600 and was sold in the gray market because there was so much overseas demand. In addition, these iPhones were often sold at a premium by hawkers. Now the iPhone 3G is easily attainable in these countries at a lower price than what hawkers would charge.



Then why the hell did you bring it up!

You honestly think that MMSes are rare in places like Europe and Asia? Wow.

In any case, here's something I found:

"Almost 30 billion MMSes sent in 1Q08, says Informa"

There's also a cool little chart of how many MMSes were sent in Q1 '08, by carrier (though it lists only the bigger carriers).

For example, China Mobile alone had 6.6 billion MMSes sent in the 1st quarter. Verizon, 1.1 billion MMSes. And so on. What's more, the year-over-year amounts of MMSes sent is WAY UP for most of the carriers too.

http://www.jasperwireless.com/files/...ac_Excerpt.pdf



Smartphone share will increase, I've said that for a long time. But that doesn't mean dumbphones are going away, for the reasons I mentioned.

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MMS is dead folks. (Ya know, I'm still not convinced it was alive in the first place.) We have a wonderful new technology called the Interweb now.

Well if both are true, I can't find them.

Why don't you give us a definition of what you think full featured means?

When you do that, you must keep the definition to a conceptual one, you can't be mentioning individual features.

It has to cover all sorts of products, such as cars, audio systems, cameras, computers, printers, Tv's, faxes, model cars, etc.

In other words, it has to have a meaning beyond some parochial one. A meaning that can be generalized, and be used in the real world, not some theoretical one in some ideal world.

Then we can begin to understand each other, and discuss this meaningfully, because right now, you are just saying no to whatever we say.

LOL. Sure. Which is why we're currently on a pace to sent 120 BILLION MMSes worldwide this year. And why MMS traffic is increasing year-over-year, greatly, rather than withering.

Check out the numbers for yourself (second article):

http://www.jasperwireless.com/files/...ac_Excerpt.pdf


'Interweb' messaging may take over eventually (or it may just co-exist), but MMS is obviously thriving right now, and is still growing. Rather rapidly, too.


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The number of MMS's sent doesn't matter. The number of faxes sent in some years was vast as well, but has shrunk significantly since e-mail.

MMS is an older technology. It's only been used because there was no other method to do what it does.

Now there is. E-mail is becoming more popular all the time.

As more phones get good e-mail capability, people will start using that over MMS, and eventually, MMS will fade away for most, except, possibly, for the cheapest phones.

Smartphones will eventually take over as they continue to become cheaper as well.

While some people still carp over the price of phone plans with data, is has been noted here that the iPhone was responsible for bringing the data rate down for many, if most users, not up.

That trend will continue. At some point, the plans won't be expensive.

It's all inevitable.

We can only argue about when it will happen. To argue that it won't is a losing argument even before it's stated.

The iPhone by any comparative yardstick can easily be described as Full Featured. And thats that !

It means nothing other than the fact that more people are getting phones.

Change comes, and most people don't see it until well after it's happened.

To quote Melgross "Don't ever take what you see in the present for what you will see in the future."

The problem is, no one can predict the shape of that future, or when it will come.

In the meantime, ppl just wanna MMS.


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Simply not true, I have a very good track record in predicting technological trends. But I can see why you may have difficulty in that area. No offense.

I said nothing about how frequent or rare is MMS.

I simply said in the time that approximately this many (30,000,000,000,000) MMS messages were sent.

Approximately this many (22,630,000,000,000,000) emails were sent.

Email is clearly a larger and more ubiquitous system.

I really, really doubt it.

If you check out the figures, the year-over-year growth rates in MMS traffic for many carriers are VERY high (like on the order of 50%, 100%, even 250%), and are not explainable simply by 'more people are getting phones'.

Take Verizon, for example. Their year-over-year increase in MMS traffic is 144%. Verizon has not more than DOUBLED in number of subscribers in the past year. That increase is more like 10%.

So, either MMS pricing is becoming more attractive (and Verizon is offering some nice MMS 'plans' these days), the technology itself is being more popularized on its' own, or it's some combination of the two.

It's also probably somewhat generational.

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But how many of those emails are sent on phones? Certainly a tiny fraction of the whole.

In any case, you can see that MMS is quite a popular technology.


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Sure. This is why you're on an internet forum, rather than making money as a big famous tech stocks analyst.

No offense.


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The lack of a replaceable battery is what keeps iPhone users from ditching their iPods all together, has very little to do with aesthetics.

I wont use my iPhone as an ipod or dedicated video device in fear that I will run out my phone battery.

The current number isn't that important, it's the growth of email that is the real tell. Since it is more ubiquitous and their is a trend to more powerful devices that can support email it look inevitable in the more developed countries.