Riffing Space

Walt Mossberg has a great article in the Wall Street Journal about the stranglehold that wireless telecom companies have on the mobile phone business–limiting choice and stifling competition.

A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.       –Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal

Mossberg also makes the great correlation between cell phones/wireless service and PCs/Internet Service.  Competition would bring better products to the market at better prices for the consumer.

I was just thinking about an example in the Tipping Point of a company that understands the importance of early-adopters.  Apparently just after Toyota started its Lexus line, they realized that they had made a mistake with the first 400LS model (so small that most companies would have ignored it), their flagship car.  Instead of ordering a massive recall a-la most auto companies, they personally called every owner, apologized for the inconvenience, then offered to have their dealerships to all the necessary upgrades.  They even ended up sending an L.A. mechanic to Alaska because there were no local dealerships to do the job.  Why?  They understood that these people who bought before the product was fully tested by the marketplace, were the people that were spreading the word about their cars.  They were the “mavens”, as Gladwell puts it, and they should be treated as such.

I am still a bit surprised that Jobs didn’t intuitively know this, that he didn’t take it into account before the price reduction.  Sure, he offered a great letter and rebate to the early-adopters, the “mavens”, only after the backlash (though, I admit, he reacted very quickly).  Seth’s blog has some interesting suggestions for Apple of his own.

Peace,

Brandon

That’s how long my AT&T phone bill was this month. I recently purchased an iPhone (love it!!!) along with the AT&T plan that comes with it. Apparently, they not only log every call, but they also log every single data transfer. Every single one! So, as the title of this post suggests, the bill really is 47 pages long. What an incredible waste of paper, money, and resources to get this to my front porch. The humorous thing is that here are two titans of technology relying on an outdated, inefficient, and unnecessary billing system.