Tero,
<< I'm not sure about Nokia being "overcommitted to pending availability of WAP handsets a year ago". >>
I thought I was paraphrasing a Nokia spokesman on this. I could be wrong. If I am NOT however, you will be sure to hear from me if I run across the source i thought I saw. <g>
<< There would be an inventory problem with 7110 if Nokia had been serious about its volume ramp-up - and there isn't. >>
I am wondering if the weight, size, and what some call the "irritating" antenna, as well as something less than trouble free operation have something to do with this?
Maybe the new Nokia 6250 will launch a bit cleaner?
BTW, the size and weight would suit me quite well, but I hate WAP, seldom use it, and use my phone as a modem for a Palm instead.
If the upcoming Nokia Communicator, 9210, were available in CDMA, I'd have one in a heartbeat.
Instead I'll probably be an early user of the Kyocera Smartphone, but will NOT be using it with WAP.
For citizens of the US where CDMA is becoming (this month or last) the dominant mobile wireless technology and where virtually all handsets have been WAP enabled since cdmaOne data services became available last summer, WAP serves as an introduction to data services (however crude) for many, and AT&T is getting good MOU and nice revenue out of its WAP enabled quad-modes from Ericsson and Mitsubishi. Up the old APRU as they say.
Meantime, interesting article I just clipped from somewhere. Note bolded comments.
>> Double your money?
Julian Bright, Editor
How realistic are operators' revenue expectations for 3G? Average revenue per user (ARPU) is an important measure of performance for the mobile operator. The consensus about 3G services appears to be that most operators need to double their ARPU - at the very least - in order to secure the levels of return they're looking for in light of licence and network rollout costs. This is going to be a tall order.
The development of new services and tariff plans has become a continuous process in the effort to raise ARPU, and yet the most successful product of all so far - pre-paid - only yields half the revenue per user of post-paid services. Subscriber numbers have rocketed, but revenues have failed to grow proportionally. So where is all this necessary additional revenue from 3G services going to come from?
Mobile data income will supplement rather than replace voice revenues runs the argument. Nortel says that the contribution from data will rise from 2 per cent of ARPU in 2000 to around 60 per cent by 2005. What it will displace instead, some observers argue, are other media sources such as newspapers, television and radio. Yet it only needs a glance at any newsstand to realise that the printed word is flourishing. Whether we are about to reduce our outlay on these other items in favour of mobile internet services seems questionable.
But can our increasing appetite for information and services expand the market to accommodate both existing media and the new mobile economy?
This presumes either that consumers have the disposable income to cover both, or that mobile internet will make us more productive, and hence wealthier and better able to fund our information habit.
The complex set of revenue streams enjoyed by NTT DoCoMo from its i-Mode service do add up to a more than doubled ARPU (from $38 to $89 according to one source), and may provide a pointer to what operators can expect.
BT Cellnet also reports a 78 per cent increase in per-subscriber revenues for its pre-paid WAP service. But there's another lesson here, since slow data rates are clearly contributing to time spent online. Speed up the connection or improve the interface, as services such as GPRS promise to do, and the transaction time is drastically reduced.
In a pre-conference panel session at UMTS 2000 last month, Carl Dugdale of Applied Value offered two important sanity checks for operators to reduce risk in their all important 3G business plans: don't bankrupt the network chasing volume at any price, and when all your billable revenue is combined, make sure your ARPU does not exceed the national average salary. The latter is an elementary but apparently commonly made mistake.
The danger is that setting more realistic revenue expectations that take account of what the market can support won't produce the necessary return within the desired timeframe.
For reassurance and possible salvation, however, mobile operators can turn once again to the frequently-cited example of Finnish teenagers. According to Nokia, they are typically spending up to 95 per cent of their weekly allowance on mobile phone usage. Extend that level of expenditure to all users and the business plan starts to look extremely healthy. <<
- Eric - |
