<Happy leap day to all. (Nyeah-nyeah -- I said it first).> Congratulations. To celebrate, I sold my Leap stock. Actually, I think it was the next day, but I put the order in to sell on the 29th. Then again, it was only the 28th in the USA. But it sold on the 29th. Or the 30th, depending on your point of view, sort of like relativity. I needed the money to buy lunch in San Diego and a round of golf. No wonder the military pays $1000 when they buy toilet seats, everything is so expensive. I'd thought they just didn't know how to manage money - I'm going to manufacture good New Zealand Rimu Toilet Seats for them; comfortable, warm, clean, aesthetically pleasing.
With lunch, golf courses and toilet seats so highly priced, this means, to digress briefly, the US$ is WAYYYYYY overpriced and spending will flow to cheaper places where people work for a living instead of hanging around Symphony Halls, sailing boats onto sand bars, playing King of the Castle, or daytripping into foreign lands to eat bacteria infected food which at least doesn't contribute to obesity which some think is a similar health risk to e-coli.
Yes, it was a great time to celebrate in Symphony Hall with swarms of Qillionaires, who might have to go back to their day jobs if the markets continue their normal work of roller-coasting - there should be some white knuckles starting to show out their in margin-land.
Anyway, and not wishing to contribute to Silicon Investor's ill-gotten gains, the point is to explain that Leap's business model of Cricket Eat All You Like is great, but Cat's Eye marketing will take over and that will be the end of high-margin minute selling as those service providers who know how to sell will use "Current Price Is ..." marketing to ensure always available, cheap, fast and high quality minutes.
Incidentally, I see that Amazon patented 'single click' buying as though that was an original idea. I hope nobody patents Cat's Eye marketing because it is now year's old prior, unoriginal art and nobody should be able to patent it [unless Qualcomm does in which case that's okay by me].
It's so obvious, but I'm amazed that few people, even among the hugely intelligent SI public seems to 'get it'. They come up with all sorts of weird objections which don't apply. I offered [a couple of years ago] $100 reward for anyone who could come up with a reason why it wouldn't work [a valid reason] and the nearest bid was from DaveMG [I think] who said the US Government would allow it.
To explain for newcomers, the base station would offer bits and minutes really cheap or free when there's not much doing in the middle of the night. Then, when things get busier, it would start charging, then increase the price as rush hour started to fill the circuits and the cell site started to suffocate [or breathe as Qualcomm puts it], which is the process whereby the cell coverage shrinks as more and more people crowd onto the base station and the nearer people end up getting their calls through as they can be heard over the increasing noise in the spectrum.
When things are running at 90% capacity, the base station might charge $10 a minute or megabit for the next caller, which would dissuade all but the most urgent calls. That way there would always be space available. If it got to 95%, then the price might go to $100 per minute and that should keep a few people off.
Never again would people get the dreaded busy signal, their average price would be really low [fixed prices could be offered for maybe 20% of customers], they would have a more constant coverage area so they wouldn't have the curse of 'breathing heavily' or my favourite, 'suffocating' cells to contend with. That would enable better cellsite layouts, for more economical coverage.
Maybe I should patent this idea since nobody seems to get it or use it which maybe makes it an original idea. Then do an IPO and make $100bn in royalties since everyone will have to offer it sometime. Somebody suggested that. Any lawyers want to do it for me, put in a post here!
If Amazon can get away with their stupid 'single click' buying idea which is patented, this extremely complex idea should be patentable.
Anyway, I sold Leap because I think that minute selling will end up sooner rather than later like gas stations and hamburgers. Pretty much a commodity. Low margins. Normal sort of investment returns. Also, the stockmarkets are due to continue down. Oil is way high and that's significant for people gassing up who would have bought a minute but can't afford it now. The Dow has been suspended in mid-air since June but at last seems to be nearing the 9200 level which it should now be at. It was supposed to be 8200 last June, but refused to budge [defiant markets can be VERY obstinate]. At last people are seeing fear, if not sense.
Sure, Leap does a great job and they have been innovative and maybe even have patented this idea of Cat's Eye marketing and they'll be worth $100bn in a few weeks.
But maybe they haven't.
So, it's au revoir from Mqurice.
It was good to meet you Jon and the multitude of SIers in San Diego.
Now, to try and make those stupid new golf clubs with graphite shafts behave as they were supposed to. I held the shaft and even swung at the ball, but they are NOT fully automatic.
Thank you to the wonderful people at Leap who have done such a great job of getting CDMA out to a swarm of subscribers. But I want to go back upstream to the world of innovative technology - preferably into CDNA [TM]. [CDNA = Cyber deoxyribonucleic acid, where we reinvent ourselves! I should trademark that.]
More another time. No time now.
Mqurice [you beat me to the Leap Year Day, but the consolation prize of sales at $92 and $94 for LWINSKI cheers me] |
