Posted on May 23, 2007, at 7:58 am .
Is it just me, or does it seem that every time a cell phone carrier releases a new device it comes off as something out of an old 3 Stooges movie?
There are the errors in execution. The release of a new product, especially a BlackBerry with a relatively high price point that will bring in the much coveted data revenue, should be a pretty big deal with any carrier. Yet company representatives are usually poorly informed about what should be a major business event and often different reps give out conflicting information to anxious consumers. Initial inventory to the stores often falls short of demand, and is unevenly distributed across the market footprint.
Continue reading ‘ThoughtPiece: Why Do Carriers Botch New Product Releases?’
Posted on May 16, 2007, at 8:50 am .
Surely one of the most annoying aspects of everyday cell phone usage is simply retrieving your voicemail. David Pogue of the New York Times captures the experience in his usual good humor:
…the carriers make you listen to a woman who has evidently overdosed on Ambien. “You have. Seven. New. Messages. You have. Two. Saved messages. To listen to your messages, press 1. When you are finished, you may hang up, or press 5 for more options. I will now read the Manhattan White Pages.â€
Continue reading ‘ThougtPiece: Why BlackBerrys Need Random Access Voicemail’
Posted on May 10, 2007, at 7:31 am .
In honor of those having all the fun at WES this week, and knowing that any serious article would be overwhelmed by all of the coverage from WES, I thought I’d offer up a more lighthearted column. So in that spirit I offer up 3 reasons why BlackBerry users have more fun:
Continue reading ‘ThoughtPiece: BlackBerry Users Have More Fun’
Posted on May 2, 2007, at 11:19 am .
The United States market is a critical one for RIM, giving the company about two-thirds of its revenue. Therefore it’s always good for BlackBerry fans to keep an eye on trends in this country.
Continue reading ‘ThoughtPiece: Verizon/AT&T — The U.S. Market’s Two Heavyweights’
Posted on April 25, 2007, at 10:10 am .
Whew, what a busy time in the BlackBerry world! It’s enough to make even the most diligent blogger want to hide under their desk, disconnect from the Matrix and receive sporadic news updates through this wonderfully new contraption we’ve heard about called the “newspaper” (it comes on paper!).
To help us sort through the mess, we brought in our mobile main man Thought, who breaks down the biggest news of the past week or so into tasty bite-sized chunks.
Continue reading ‘ThoughtPiece: The BlackBerry Beat’
Posted on April 20, 2007, at 4:05 pm .
With all that’s happened to RIM and the foremost BlackBerry sites on the ‘net this week, maybe the claims from our Mad Genius of Mobile are a little premature. Still, Thought makes a convincing argument as to why May just may be BlackBerry month, and tells us what that has to do with Apple. Enjoy.
Continue reading ‘ThoughtPiece: Is May BlackBerry Month?’
Posted on April 11, 2007, at 11:02 am .
I am sure many of you thoughtful readers out there have in mind a good idea of what your “perfect†BlackBerry would be. Judging from the comments on this and other BlackBerry sites, I would say that for many the ideal BlackBerry would have 3G, WiFi, GPS, camera and multimedia player, just for starters.
But will there ever such a thing as the perfect BlackBerry? I think not, for the following reasons.
Continue reading ‘ThoughtPiece: Will There Ever Be the Perfect BlackBerry?’
Posted on March 21, 2007, at 7:45 am .
A recent article in the New York Times cited concerns regarding the number of cell phone operating systems:
Two operating systems run more than 95 percent of the world’s computers, but dozens of systems are behind the 2.5 billion mobile phones in circulation, a situation that has hampered the growth of new services, industry executives and independent specialists say.
The article points out that so many operating systems slow down the development of new applications. Moreover, small software companies, which often have been an important source of innovation in the computer industry, are often shut out of application development since the barriers to entry are so much higher.
Continue reading ‘ThoughtPiece: Are There Too Many Smart Phone Operating Systems?’
Posted on March 7, 2007, at 8:40 am .
For most consumers, one of the most significant downsides of the mobile phone business is being locked into contracts with a carrier. The rationale we are given by the cellular companies is that they need such contracts to justify their high customer acquisition costs. They tell us that this also enables them to subsidize lower prices on the equipment and thus make mobile phones affordable to a far larger population. Yet does it really have to be that way?
The short answer I have is this: I don’t know. I haven’t seen any in-depth studies of the economics of the cell phone industry, and so I’m hesitant to pass too strong of a judgment.
However, here is what I do know.
Continue reading ‘ThoughtPiece: Those Nasty Cell Phone Contracts’
Posted on February 14, 2007, at 7:07 am .
David Pogue, technology editor for the New York Times, once remarked that “simplicity sells.†All things considered, consumers generally opt for the most simple, elegant solution.
Consider Google: it’s the most valuable piece of web real estate in the world, and yet its home page is remarkably simple and basically unchanged from when it began. Google’s philosophy is to keep the complexity as far removed from the consumer as possible.
Continue reading ‘ThoughtPiece: Simplicity Sells’
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