Monday, December 11, 2006
The Future Of Mobile Data: Some Thoughts On Pricing And Business Models
Posted by Nurhisham Hussein in "THOUGHT" @ 11:00 PM
"Will flat-rate pricing make mobile data take off? No. It's a nice start, but the operators need to take several other steps as well...What needs to be moved to mobile networks isn't just the Web's applications or price structure, it's the Web's open business model. We need to run a huge number of experiments in order to figure out what applications users will want in mobile data."
Michael Mace, formerly of Palm and PalmSource, has blogged on what he believes would make mobile data adoption a success - essentially his take is that to survive, carriers will have to change their business model and mobile offerings to one more akin to wired broadband and the Internet in general. Meanwhile, research firm IDC has recently done a survey indicating that 72.5% Americans do not use any form of mobile data service, except for SMS. The main reason stated was price - which dovetails rather nicely with my rant on mobile data pricing last week. So, if you don't have a data plan, what would it take in terms of pricing and/or offered services for you to get one?
Michael Mace, formerly of Palm and PalmSource, has blogged on what he believes would make mobile data adoption a success - essentially his take is that to survive, carriers will have to change their business model and mobile offerings to one more akin to wired broadband and the Internet in general. Meanwhile, research firm IDC has recently done a survey indicating that 72.5% Americans do not use any form of mobile data service, except for SMS. The main reason stated was price - which dovetails rather nicely with my rant on mobile data pricing last week. So, if you don't have a data plan, what would it take in terms of pricing and/or offered services for you to get one?
