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New Mobile Phones for Kids Rock!
I was talking to my accountant last week; she’s a smart, self-employed mid-career professional with a husband and kids and she’s definitely one of the more practical-minded Europeans I know. We were talking about ‘handys’ (keitai, in Germany), and I told her about the huge success the mobile Internet and 3G are having (still) in Japan, versus the perception in Europe that no one’s making a single (Euro) cent on UMTS. Her reaction was typical, but interesting: “I’m not going to use the phone for sending mail or anything but talking. The keypad is far too tiny. It’s just not in the mindset of my generation.”
Interestingly, she added: “Perhaps if our kids started using them [data-enabled mobile phones] early, they’d grow up thinking about using it for all that mail and stuff. I’d buy a data handy for my daughter…” I jumped right in, and told her “that’s exactly what’s happening in Japan.” Of course, Wireless Watchers like the smart readers of this newsletter know that the success factors behind mobile usage didn’t (and don’t) depend on youth growing up with i-mode.
Tags: 3G, DoCoMo, flash, FOMA, GPS, i-mode, kddi, nec, sanyo, Skype, SoftBank, UMTS, video
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