Why American Teens Don’t Want The New Cell Phones
Here’s a Slate article on why I-Mode and SMS haven’t really taken off and the US: There’s No Place Like Home – Why American teens don’t want the new cell phones. By Brendan I. Koerner
Basically, when someone in Europe or Asia tells you that your cell phone sucks, the proper response is to show The Two Towers trailer on your broadband connection. Mobile data services and the cost of home Internet access are inversely related; the luxury of domestic broadband makes you want to use your cell phone as a cell phone, rather than an Internet access device. It also makes paying, say, $40/month for T-Mobile’s crappy GPRS on my Treo, an unconscionable luxury. So I can access up-to-date movie times when I’m outside. Oh, wait, I have Vindigo.
Granted, this makes mobile data services much for costly for those who need it, as the infrastructure doesn’t get built or remains expensive if it is built. On the other hand, 3G might get technologically end-runned by 802.11x access points, popping up like mushrooms. There’s also the wide-area technology based on the defunct Ricochet.
Oh, the article fails to mention one of the main attractions of SMS in, say, the Philippines: price. Voice costs are relatively large compared to SMS costs, so people have developed the uncanny ability to type out messages quickly on phone keypads. It’s not because of the extravagent data infrastructure vis-a-vis American GSM networks, it’s the extravagent price of voice services locally.