I’ve been staggered by the hype around the iPhone and the hysteria around it’s launch in the US with queues of people waiting for days and day to buy one. I’ve been scouring the newswires with interest to see what people will think about the iPhone in Europe, and at last someone has recognised that we have a totally different type of market and phone culture over here. The International herald Tribune reports:
“Despite a tsunami of hype following the rollout of Apple’s iPhone in the United States last week, analysts and market experts say the device will face greater obstacles in the fragmented European mobile phone market, which is dominated by pay-as-you-go customers and operators with their own designs on the download music market.”
In Europe (where we don’t pay to receive calls except when we’re in a different country), we live to text. SMS is a huge revenue opportunity for the mobile operators, and a phone that makes it hard to send text messages will not go down well at all with most people…
Europeans typically have their mobile phones within reach at all times – even on the beach. We never turn them off. We spend ages texting everyone we know. At midnight on New Years eve, you just can’t get any text messages through as the networks are so busy (we sent 133 million text message on New Years Eve in 2005 and 165 million in 2006 for example). This is a HUGE revenue opportunity for the mobile operators which would be lost if we were all fumbling with our iPhones trying to send the SMS. So Robert Scoble can keep his phone – I’ll stick to texting all my mates and business colleagues 20 times a day and listening to music on my E650 which I’ve pulled over from my CD collection at no cost.
It looks pretty though. But I much prefer function over form…
Eileen's Digital Technology 