Dean Bubley

Mobile Phone Industry in Denial About Economy

The iPhone example is an interesting one - but coupled with other factors it's still quite a US-centric model that doesn't work quite so well elsewhere.

Bear in mind that in the rest of the world, the majority of people use prepaid cellphone plans (often with unsubsidised devices), not monthly contracts. iPhones can be $500-1000 upfront in those cases.

SImilarly, "ditching the landline" is unlikely in markets which tend to use ADSL rather than cable for broadband, especially if there is no legal imperative to sell unbundled DSL without an associated PSTN telephone account. Generally it is only the economically disadvantaged that "cut the cord" - it's not aspirational, except in a few countries like Finland.

I'd certainly agree that Apple is better-placed than the Android ecosystem at this point in time. Slightly less true of non-US markets where people generally buy high-end Nokias because of brand, or basic preference for their voice and SMS user experience.

Also, worth noting that in many parts of the world users would rather have a mobile broadband USB modem for their notebooks, than a smartphone.

Dean Bubley

Comm Forecast No. 1: No More Landlines

This is interesting to me. The US appears to have a fairly unique attitude to "cutting the cord" which is not present in most other countries. (I'm from the UK). While there is generally fixed-mobile substitution elsewhere, there is typically much lower use of cable & ADSL tends to be the predominant means of delivering broadband, except somewhere like Japan where there's been a big push on fibre. Also, the distinction in numbering between fixed and mobile tends to mean that most people accept the validity of both, for different applications. In the UK, I've noticed BT adfvertising its fixed telephony service is being cheaper than many prepaid mobile tariffs, encouraging reverse mobile-to-fixed substitution.

However, one thing does seem fairly clear to me - copper is not going to disappear any time soon for calling *businesses* rather than consumers. While the very largest firms might use VoIP + copper, the average hairdresser or restaurant or travel agent seems unlikely to use cellular. In those cases, you want to call a place, not a person.

Dean Bubley

Vodafone's Blackberry Phone Sans Wifi: A Big Mistake?

In this case, the handset has been specified & customised for Verizon and Vodafone on an exclusive basis. Yes, RIM is the manufacturer, but they who pay the piper call the tune.

I'm pretty confident that if they'd asked for it to include WiFi, it wouldn't have been a major challenge to add it - it's in the BlackBerry Bold & various others, for a start.

First Out of the Gate: WiMax Vs. LTE

I disagree. Fairly few products will get WiMAX pre-integrated - there's too much wishful thinking about this, which doesn't fit with commercial reality.

WiFi operates in unlicenced spectrum, and the testing/conformance burden for equipment manufacturers is *much* lower than for WiMAX. I can't see there being many cameras, game consoles etc that have WiMAX. The problem is one of scale - most countries will not have national WiMAX networks in the foreseeable, and those that do have them will mostly be in unfavourable frequency bands with poor indoor coverage.

I reckon about 1% of global laptop shipments in 2009 will have WiMAX, and I reckon the figure will struggle to get to 15% even in a few years time.

The main competition for WiMAX isn't really LTE, it's HSPA, which is already pretty widespread. This is the whole thrust of my post - LTE won't be mainstream until 2013 onwards.... but 3.5G cellular is already.

DeanB

Are Text Messaging Prices the Biggest Wireless Issue?

Mobile operators around the world are trying to maintain their overall SMS revenues by playing with bundling, pricing elasticity and so forth. Volumes are going up, but (on average) prices are coming down. They are trying to encourage users to adopt large bundles (with a cheap "per message" rate but better revenue visibility) by increasing one-off message prices.

That said, some of the US carriers' pricing seems egregiously high when compared to prices of 1c or less in some countries in Asia which use essentially the same type of infrastructure.

There is a fine line between "value-based pricing", where the user willingly pays a premium for a service they really like - and "resentment-based pricing", where the user feels extorted, but pays anyway as it's a "must have" service. Resentment-based pricing leads to spectacular churn rates at a later date, when credible competition appears. It also leads to regulatory pressure if customers feel ripped-off.

From a European analyst's perspective, some of the North American carriers are now seriously miscalibrating the value/resentment balance on SMS pricing.