C'mon, 160 minutes per month is certainly conjecture. But 5 minutes a day, average, for a rapidly depreciating $1,500 appliance with a $60 monthly charge and $1.50 or $2 per minute seems about right to me. The first people to buy it will be those businesses which REALLY need it, [or people with 'fun' money to spend or want 'security' so put one in the car, or remote house, just in case]. Businesses have high communication needs, so 5 minutes is not much - existing and earlier cellphone useage patterns would be a good guide to how businesses will use the phones.
One market will be the upgrades from crusty old satellite phones; for example, the Inmarsat jobs with antennae you have to set up pointing carefully in the right direction and which cost a fortune. They are ready for the scrap heap, or the second hand market where Globalstar won't reach. Many Iridium customers, who don't need the coverage, will swap to Globalstar. This upgrade market has not been mentioned much and is small, but will be fairly quickly onto Globalstar, I guess.
The fixed phones in places without phone service now will have much higher usage - they'll run hot, all day long.
Price elasticity is the big issue. $1.50 within the home zone and $2 for roaming to other countries, is 'sticker shock' territory. To get 7 million people using 10 billion minutes a year, the price will have to come down a LOT!
Since there is vast opportunity-cost in wasted minutes, right now running at 10bn per year, the consumption of those minutes needs to be high very soon. Better to go cheap and get a handset buying frenzy and boost handset production flat out.
The current price per minute will not maximize returns to Globalstar or the service providers [unless they really are right and there won't be handsets available at $1500 because they are all sold out straight away]. We'll soon know the answer to that when the sales start - it's not looking good since Michael Allard got one the next day, apparently with no commitment to using 500 minutes a month or anything.
Maurice |
