> AOL would be a natural to adopt the RIMM's Blackbury e-mail system and pagers.
Not sure how popular a $US 300-400 Blackberry + $25-50 added monthly wireless fee would be among AOL subscribers, who I picture as mostly first time users, computer klutzes, and families w/kids. (I may be a little behind the times here :-)
Bellsouth, Dell, RCN, etc are I assume mostly selling to people and corps who already live and die by e-mail, and need a better technique, and who are not as price sensitive.
On the other hand, market penetration of only 1 in 40, of 20 million AOL subscribers, would be 500,000 pagers. I could live on that!
What might sell better at AOL, using RIMM hardware and technology.... Over in Japan, one of the most popular and fastest growing wireless services is instant messaging, like ICQ or AOL Messenger here. Turn your pager on, and everyone on your 'friends list' is notified that you're online, and vice versa. Used by the younger crowd to hang out together virtually, so to speak. Don't know whether RIMM has anything like this in the works.
- Dway |
