US vs Rest of the World

[slitchfield]

It's official - Tomi Ahonen is Rafe Blandford and I claim my £5.... Industry luminary Tomi is famed for his mobile-related books and essays and here goes into interesting (but extensive) detail on the history of the smartphone and why the US market is different to the Rest of the World. Can Nokia ever crack the USA? Will RIM or Apple take over everywhere else? Tomi echoes many of the conclusions that Rafe has come to in recent podcasts and I guarantee you'll find yourself nodding in agreement.

Read on in the full article.

When pointing out the inferiority of the US cellphone infrastructure, the author neglects to mention the geographic challenges that are the main reason. It's far easier to cover a small densely populated nation with cells than one with vast areas of sparse population.

A good written summary of what we all already realise though. The differences show up in other ways. All over Europe you can see Porsche 911s everywhere, they are ubiquitous like a plague of locusts. But Corvettes or Dodge Vipers are very rare beasts, despite being much cheaper.

The iPhone has spawned out of an entertainment device, the iPlod, an as such is considered more as a toy thing rather than utility in Europe. It is also marketed with US style restriction, confined to single networks without competition - which Europeans resent, especially in Deutschland where the exclusivity deal was kicked out - and rightly so.

This guy is a Nokia tool.

[Hurtta]

Wow, such a huge, mindtwistingly long post. I spent almost an hour reading it. And IMHO recommended reading for anyone interested in smartphone business. Towards the end he started to digress but most of it was pure enjoy to read.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

When pointing out the inferiority of the US cellphone infrastructure, the author neglects to mention the geographic challenges that are the main reason. It's far easier to cover a small densely populated nation with cells than one with vast areas of sparse population.

Given the length of his blog entry, I don't think that he could have fitted anything more. Besides, the reasons for US cellphone infrastructure quality is not important. The way it affected consumers' preferences over phone design is.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

This guy is a Nokia tool.

Well duh! He kinda admits himself also on the post. However, what he is does not take away merits of the post.

"When pointing out the inferiority of the US cellphone infrastructure, the author neglects to mention the geographic challenges that are the main reason. It's far easier to cover a small densely populated nation with cells than one with vast areas of sparse population."

He mostly writes about nordic countries, which have the same population density (Sweden) or are even more sparsely populated (Finland) than USA.

[zxon]

Compare to any Nokia Symbian cameraphone - they all have always done video recording straight out of the box. The user does not need to - is not expected to - install any parts that should be there to begin with?

The writer appears to have forgotten about Nokia's very first cameraphone - the 7650. That didn't support video recording when it first came out. Only later did they make an application for it that would allow this.

[Arcade]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

"When pointing out the inferiority of the US cellphone infrastructure, the author neglects to mention the geographic challenges that are the main reason. It's far easier to cover a small densely populated nation with cells than one with vast areas of sparse population."

He mostly writes about nordic countries, which have the same population density (Sweden) or are even more sparsely populated (Finland) than USA.

But even if Finland is sparsely populated, Its not that big in physical size compared to US, which is why it becomes a bit more feasible.

Originally Posted by Arcade

But even if Finland is sparsely populated, Its not that big in physical size compared to US, which is why it becomes a bit more feasible.

Sure, but from investment point of view the situation is roughly the same. You cover same amount of people per money invested. American corporations also have vastly bigger resources, and the possible pay off from those investments is much bigger.


Besides, even the really big american metropolises tend to have inferior mobile and broandband services than their european equavalents.

Originally Posted by Hurtta

Given the length of his blog entry, I don't think that he could have fitted anything more. Besides, the reasons for US cellphone infrastructure quality is not important. The way it affected consumers' preferences over phone design is.

I would agree but he managed to fit in several sentences apologising for pointing out how bad the US cellphone infrastructure is. A simple mitigation would have been much more efficient.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

He mostly writes about nordic countries, which have the same population density (Sweden) or are even more sparsely populated (Finland) than USA.

I would suggest that Finland with 5.5 million people in 340,000 sq km is significantly easier to cover with a cellnet work in a nation with 300 million plus people in 3.75 million sq km including vast mountain ranges, deserts, plains etc.

Finland is only half the size of Alaska in territory. Finland would fit into the Great Basin with room to spare.

Cell coverage for the USA is a massively difficult undertaking.

[Jejoma]

Ignoring the details argued over, that was some article. A fascinating if lengthy read!

[davidmaxwaterma]

He seemed to ignore the 'unlimited data' plans. I think unlimited data plans completely change the use of the cell phone - they make wifi almost useless (only necessary for transferring large amounts of data), which is more of a focus in the US.

I think this was one of the smarter parts of the whole 'iPhone' package - forcing people to have unlimited data plans completely changed how they used the device. This might not have been such a big deal in non-US countries (still pretty big) since internet use from phones was very common elsewhere, but in the US the difference was marked.

Amazing post. Really interesting insights from an insider and pretty well balanced overall - very hard to argue with anything he says.

<i>This guy is a Nokia tool.</i>

So that's why he says the answer is neither Symbian nor iPhone but somewhere in between, and bigs up R.I.M. more than any other company at the end, right?

Someone didn't read this article properly. . .

[davidmaxwaterma]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I would suggest that Finland with 5.5 million people in 340,000 sq km is significantly easier to cover with a cellnet work in a nation with 300 million plus people in 3.75 million sq km including vast mountain ranges, deserts, plains etc.

Finland is only half the size of Alaska in territory. Finland would fit into the Great Basin with room to spare.

Cell coverage for the USA is a massively difficult undertaking.

You might be right. However, when I lived in Silicon Valley, I could not even travel into the hills without losing cell phone coverage.

While living there, I once went on vacation to SiChuan in China (yeah, where the earthquake was). While traveling on the bus up in the mountains, I was amazed that the Beijingers on the bus were actually able to make phone calls from up there (and I guess SMSing was even easier).

When in Silicon Valley, I even had to purchase *two* phones - one which was digital SE t68i that would work with my TiBook, was advanced and worked well in the valley; and an analog Nokia that would better out of the valley. I kept the Nokia in the car for emergencies - the digital was close to useless out of the cities.

A couple of years after that, I moved to Beijing. I traveled quite widely throughout China - not just in the cities, but often in the subburbs. I don't recall ever not being able to use my phone. Of course, I don't tend to make too many phone calls in China, but I sent/received many SMSes.

So, your argument may well have merit when comparing with Finland, but China?....I don't think so. ...but that's just my opinion.

...or did I miss something?

[davidmaxwaterma]

> It's official - Tomi Ahonen is Rafe Blandford and I claim my £5

You say this because of the content of the article, or just it's exhaustivity[1]?



[1] Is that a word?