Community update: The 850 MHz issue

AVee openmoko-comunity at avee.org
Tue Nov 6 18:14:46 CET 2007


On Tuesday 06 November 2007 17:34, hank williams wrote:
> On 11/6/07, Jeffrey Thomas <eljefedelito at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Its really hard to imagine a company building a phone that didnt think
> > > through what frequencies were needed. More interestingly, that it took
> > > a trip from Michael to Taiwan to get anyone to focus on it. If this
> > > substantially sets back the development effort, it really is a major
> > > blow to the project.
> >
> > Isn't it possible that the FIC's main userbase, in Asia, doesn't have
> > this band to worry about?  I live in the US but it seems like all of
> > these comments are focused on *our* coverage, like we're the center of
> > the world...
>
> It really is hard to imagine them thinking that they were designing a
> phone for just outside the US. If that was their thinking, it
> certainly should have been clarified. Certainly a plurality of the
> first units sold, and perhaps a majority, have been sold in the US.
> Honestly, its hard to imagine an Open Source phone gaining much
> traction without US support.

Common, take a look outside of your own borders. It's hard to inmagine an Open 
Source phone gaining any traction at all in the US, land of software patents, 
closed standards and telco control. There are quit a few OSS projects doing 
just fine despite being illegal in the US, an Open Source phone will do just 
fine without US support.
And Nokia is not a US company, nor is Sony-Ericsson, both became major players 
in this market before there even was any form of GSM coverage in the US. 

> > We're not, nor do we have nearly the largest possible sales base.
>
> It is not true to say that we dont *nearly* have the largest base.
> whatever the numbers are, particularly for smart phones, I would be
> shocked to hear the US was anything but one of the top markets. Only
> japan could compete as a potentially larger market in asia. Certainly
> they are not going to be selling tons of these in China.

Yeah, because it's not like there are loads of smart phones being sold in 
Europe... It's Asia first, then Europe and the the America's, largely because 
the US had an incompatible system of their own for years. And you may be 
suprised about china too, 1% of the chinese buying a phone is as just as good 
as 4% of the US buying your phone. And it's far easier to gain marketshare in 
China then in the hugely locked-up US market.

I feel your pain though, it would really suck to miss out on the neo because 
off dull things like frequency issues, and I really hope this will be 
resolved in some way.

AVee




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