Hi Doc,
I could probably draw a parallel to your preferences for dedicated function devices, because I too often find it to be the case. A case in point: corrective eyeware.
Two years ago I opted into a progressive lens design, but after the first six months I found I could not get used to them for reading purposes. I was told it might take that long, but no dice - distance was fine, but too much focal hunting and discomfort for me when it came to the computer or a sit down reading session.
So I purchased a separate pair for reading, which I found were not good enough for some intermediate distance work that I do on the computer, so I now have three pairs: progressive for general use, reading and intermediate distances. When I leave the house I usually have on my progressives as default, but I sometimes forget to take the other two, which generally works out fine unless I'm going to the library or to a full day's work at the office.
"When companies go open they don't make money and they end up going bust or they get merged. You have to make people pay in order to get something good. [... ] Excessive functionality is a bane to all device mfgers, but if the cost to add extra functionality is infinitesimal as it seems is the case, there's no reason not to add it"
At some point open depends on closed, and closed actually means open. How is the situation being viewed, from the outside looking in, or from the inside looking out?
Service providers especially need to be compensated when they must pay out capital to remain operational. As for, "You have to make people pay in order to get something good," the corollary is not always true. I.e., it is not always true that when you pay you always get something that is good. Especially when limited choices from an even more limited number of suppliers force a selection because it's the only option available. Or worse, when there are no options available to satisfy the customer's real requirements because the desired options would cause the sole provider(s) to undergo catastrophic disruption.
But here we are talking about the iPhone device as it would be used in developed nations, not some least-common-denominator solution for a sub-saharan village that runs off a magneto or a manually powered gen set. However, if you look at the design of the 100 dollar laptop that is almost ready to ship to developing nations, one finds some of the same iPhone features and capabilities, albeit at the most essential levels. And in some regions solar powered electrical stations are already being prepared for use. With time, your observation "if the cost to add extra functionality is infinitesimal as it seems is the case, there's no reason not to add it"will hold true, even in Negroponte boxes and the power sources that feed them.
Some of the value that I receive from Skype transcend its free sticker price, almost placing those experiences in a different dimension of consideration. In certain modes it facilitates an end to end solution, even if the middle doesn't belong to it, designed to meet users' needs like none other that I am aware of to date. Last month, for example, I found myself on Skype chatting with an netizen friend who was on a return trip from a wireless conference in Stockholm while aboard a jet that was traveling over the Atlantic at approximately 35,000 ft.
At one point in our conversation he asked if I'd mind returning to the call after he attended to another caller that was bidding for his ears (and eyes), which turned out to be a two-way video call - although, he confessed to not using a camera during the flight. The interloping caller, btw, was a fellow employee of his who was on assignment in Panama. To round out the scene, I was sitting in my den, in Brooklyn.
I'd pay a monthly fee, or even a per-event on, for such capabilities if it were reasonably tied to a cost base and allowed the company a profit. Some would even argue that I'm already indirectly paying that fee today through my monthly "broadband" (geesh, I hate that word) subscription to Time Warner's RR service. In any event, I wouldn't, under normal circumstances, extend myself to the point of meeting the financial demands of most sat-phone operators who are still operating from within silos. It's the departure from silos towards open fields that comprises the fuzzy math that increasingly defines today's communications-related (and many other) business models.
Considering that there are tens of millions of registered Skype users (as I type this reply, a quick glance at my screen tells me 6,002,699 individuals are presently using it - sometimes that number reaches into the thirty million area) and it doesn't pay for transport, I think the user base is sufficient to amortize such a "reasonable" fee, if not one that was ridiculously low, in comparative terms. Value then accrues in other ways, usually based on the number of subscribers, or participants, a service claims, and from that point on defining a business model is a wide open affair.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to relate to, and compare, value propositions based on historical precedent alone. Moving away from voice, how much did it cost an architect to subscribe to a GIS service that provided global maps and photos with tree-top detail five years ago? Today it's "free," by most measures of the term "free," but is it really free? Is the apparent freeness of Google Earth something that must be put under a microscope and questioned, just as Skype's voice services have been, just because a couple of hundred GIS outfits may have been impacted by it? The point here is, those GIS firms will either enhance their businesses because of Google Earth, or they will fold, depending on their ability to adapt.
FAC |
