Community update: The 850 MHz issue

[ramsesoriginal]

On Nov 6, 2007 6:39 PM, hank williams <hank777 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 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.
> >
>
> 1. did I say it was not possible to exist as a company without the US? No.
>
> What I said was that a plurality of smart phones are sold in the US.
that's not true. I don't know the exact numbers, but i DO remember
that the US are only at the nineth or tenth place of the
smartphone-buyers-list.

> It is a major market.
 hm.. no. In the us the mobile communication sector ISN'T a major
market at all. Ok, my information is not thaat up to date (2005-2006),
but if we compare: italy and germany togheter have more active mobile
phones then the whole usa. (actrually in italy we have 2.5 phones per
person :D )

>And a huge amount of OS work is done in the US.
ok, that's true. But that doesn't mean that less is done outside the usa.

> To design a phone that specifically cant really be sold in the US is
> dumb.
As above, in 2005/2006 only 12% of the announced phones could be used
in the usa. I don't know if ou have ever been in a phone shop in
europe or asia.. compare it to the usa and you'll cry to.

>It cuts out a huge potential market. And given the high level of
> competition, loosing 20 - 30% of your market opportunity is
> potentially deadly.
>
> > > > 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...
>
> "loads". Is that a new unit of measure in europe?
If you have no exact data, you have to approximate. The countries with
the highest phone/person ratios are japan, finnland, italy, spain and
germany. I wouldn't say this are third world countries, so you can
assume we are not speaking of old nokia 3310, but probably some really
hig-tech phones.

>
> 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.
> >
>
> Ok, so I guess this whole thing in your mind is really good biz dev
> strategy because they dont need the US.
No one sais they don't need usa. Just if they have to drop usa or rest
of the world.. i would choose usa.

> Lol. They need more strategists like you at FIC.
I think they would need more testers, as we saw..

>
> Hank
>
Stefan
>
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