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Cell Phones Becoming Profitless
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Jul 29, 2004 08:49 PM
from the imploding-markets dept.
from the imploding-markets dept.
saccade.com writes "EE Times has a fascinating article
on how electronics companies are being sucked into a profitless
spiral by the cell phone market. More and more of the small consumer
gadgets are being folded into the phone: camera, music player,
PDA, GPS, etc. So the market for non-phone gadgets is slowly
going away as the phone picks up more functions. However, consumers
don't buy most phones; they are given away (or sold very cheap)
by the service providers as hooks to get people to sign up for
mobile service. So the service providers are demanding (and getting)
rock-bottom prices for fancy phones they can give away, and the
micro chip companies are forced into brutal competition for a
market that is shrinking into a single commodity gadget, the
phone."
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Forward to Steve (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps a marketer like Apple can break through with an enhanced phone product that will create a demand that outweighs the current expectation on the part of consumers that phone hardware is free (as in beer) or nearly free. This is right up Apple's alley.
The Motorola deal may be a trial balloon for Apple. Imagine the full capacity and function of the mini iPod married to a full-featured phone. Add to this the stylish design that Apple would strive to achieve and I think you have something that can break this "death spiral."
Crossing the Chasm (Score:5, Interesting)
In three years, I will bet anything that you will be able to connect a bluetooth mouse, keyboard and some sort of monitor to your cell phone (probably via it's charging cradle). For most users, these devices will be powerful enough to toss their PCs for good.
But to get there, the industry is running uphill at a breakneck rate - features and technology are going nutz - it is EXPENSIVE to make this transition.
Parent
Re:Crossing the Chasm (Score:5, Funny)
I can't wait until they add 3D accelerators that use the side of your face as a heat sink.
Parent
Re:Crossing the Chasm (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, I think for most tasks, I could probably replace a PC now if the damned thing could be connected to a monitor (you can already connect a bluetooth keyboard)...
Considering that, I think three years is not a stretch at all...
Parent
Re:Crossing the Chasm (Score:5, Interesting)
The only earth shattering news about our cell phone market is that we continue to put up with hand-me-down technology from Japan and Europe and we also continue to pay way too much for it. The latest Samsung phone released here in the US has finally met the same standards as the NTT phone I bought 3 years ago in Japan...except it's $300 here and my phone back then only ran me 12,000yen (~$100). But if I sign up for a one year binding contract with T-Mobile, they'll discount it down to $200...woohoo.
The only reason why a mojority of handheld features are going into cell phones is because 95% of people don't NEED the full features of a handheld, and the small subset of features they do need (calendar, todo, adress book) are easy to implement in a cell phone. I consider myself a technology freak and I would never pay extra money for a cell phone that will open word documents because I have never been so damned busy that I couldn't wait to open it on a regular computer.
Parent
Re:Crossing the Chasm (Score:5, Insightful)
I carry both a PDA and a Cell Phone. While combining them might mean I have to carry less junk in my pockets, I'd rather have them as seperate devices. They are different devices and have mutually incompatible design constraints.
A phone should be as small and light as possible while still being ergonomically suited to it's intended use. It can get by with a minimalistic display -- enough for maybe two or three lines of text, tops. All of it's battery power should go to driving the signal -- it shouldn't have any parasitic crap which reduces it's talk and standby time.
A PDA on the other hand should be big enough to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and have a display big enough to show a paragraph of text in a non-eyestrain-causing font. It should give you a writing/drawing surface roughly equivilent to a post-it note. And it should have a battery life measured in weeks, not hours. A few extra bells and whistles (like games, MP3s, and email) might be nice as long as they don't detract from the primary purpose of keeping all the information I need organized and handy, and reminding me when I need to go to a meeting.
The problem with the combination devices is that if it's small enough to make a good phone, it's too small to make a good PDA; and if it's big enough to make a good PDA it's too clunky to make a practical phone.
Parent
Phone upgrade addiction (Score:5, Insightful)
An opportunity for what? Remember, it is the service providers that treat phones as loss leaders. They do it to ensure customer lock-in. If phone are sold instead of given away, the profit will go to the retailers. The service providers still won't make money on phones and their customers won't be willing to sign up for a 2 year contract.
The current situation is bad for manufacturers because bargaining power is concentrated in a handful of service providers. If they sold to consumers, there would be more room for product differentiation, marketing, and profit.
Parent
Re:Phone upgrade addiction (Score:5, Insightful)
So why should I care? Should I want them to "differntiate, market and profit" so they can get more of my hard-earned cash for esentially the same product?
The translation of this whole article is that cell phones have entered commodity status, which is an sign of a healthy, mature market, and they're bringing other consumer electronics with them.
Us consumers: should be rejoicing. This is good for us and good for the industry.
The manufaturers: Are just pissed that they have to work harder for their money. Although they're making less profit individually, the lean businesses this model requires are a sign of a healthier, more mature industry in the long run.
Never fall for it when business say they can't make money. The worst that can happen is that they'll be replaced by someone that knows how to make a profit selling the same thing.
TW
Parent
Re:Phone upgrade addiction (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem really is created by the manufacturers as much as the providers. The phone has become a fashion item; for quite a lot of people, the phone you use tells others about who you are. Thus people tend to want to get a new phone very often, as fashions and designs change. That drives down prices a lot, as people can't afford to get a new, really expensive, phone every year, and on the other hand, the manufacturers dump the prices of their new models in order to make them the next must-have.
In a sense, it's the SIM card that defines their phone for people - that's the thing that holds their subscription, as well as address lists, phone numbers and so on. The phone hardware it currently sits in is just another fancy shell, to be discarded whenever the next model comes along.
Parent
Re:hardware as a loss leader (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I'd be happy to get a good phone for free, but there's not a chance in hell i'd sign one of those long-term contracts they have on offer. Your circumstances change, your free phone ends up costing you a lot of money. Happens to most ppl i know that sign up.
I think I'll pay for my phones thanks...
Parent
Re:Forward to Steve (Score:5, Insightful)
Jobs already said that Apple isn't interested in getting into PDAs again, because it would force them into the cell phone market. He's apparently not considering this option.
Apart from that I never understood the idea about integrating new functions into a phone. I like SMS, because it enables me to send someone a message without causing any disturbance. But that's about everything new I like about mobile phones. It just has to be small, convenient to operate and solid. I'm glad if I don't realize that it's with me before it rings. IMO it's a natural problem of the cell phone makers. It would be quite hard to justify 400$ a unit if they would have kept improving state of the art phones from ~2001 (I guess that it costs 20 bucks to manufacture them). They just had to come up with new features like color displays, PDA functions or neat little cameras.Otherwise we would buy phones for 30 bucks and we would also not accept 2 years contracts (common practice in Europe) with our providers. It's kinda obvious that the companies are not keen on such events.
Parent
History repeats itself (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:History repeats itself (Score:5, Insightful)
If theres room for more companies, the industry grows, if not, it shrinks.
In any case, the providers arent exactly 'giving away' phones with 4 megapixel cameras and PDA functions. They cost a bundle, and I am sure they are making a tidy profit on those.
More likely, people buy phones with crappy 320x200 cameras, then fork out again to buy a 3mp camera. So they pay for a camera twice, and the industry gains. So.. stfu article writer!
Parent
No, I did not read the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
No way in hell I'd trade my 4 megapixel camera for a shit 320x240 phone picture JPEG'd to hell.
Well, maybe this is true for the PDA part.. but most PDA users have gadget fetishes anyways.
p.s. fp?
Re:No, I did not read the article... (Score:5, Interesting)
My thoughts exactly. I did rtfa and I don't buy it. Much like the all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/phone/fax/kitchen sink devices out there, I'd much rather have a few gadgets which do their job excellently than one which does several jobs in a slip-shod manner. I don't like camera phones. They're slow and have horrible resolution. The PDA/phone hybrids are much too large to carry comfortably in my pocket. I'm completely happy with paying $150 for my small cell phone which gives excellent reception in most locations, a couple more hundred for my digital camera, and some more hundreds for my Neuros MP3 player. And, most of my friends feel the same way. Some day when miniaturization and overall quality of such products improves, then I'll reconsider.
Parent
Re:No, I did not read the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've already said it [slashdot.org], but I'll say it again. Megapixels are a myth, just like megahertz. Your 3MP phone camera isn't going to get nearly the image quality as a 3MP dedicated digital camera. Read my other comment for more info.
Parent
Re:No, I did not read the article... (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't matter who makes it. There are physical limitations of optics at work here. Correcting for aberrations takes a lot of glass, and glass isn't particularly light. There are currently limitations in the sensors such that larger sensors give better quality than smaller sensors. This will probably always be true to some degree or another (large format film camera give better results than 35mm, but for most of the market, who cares?). Sure, phone cams could potentially someday be enough for a lot of people, but they will NEVER take over the camera market as a whole. Just imagine holding a phone w/ attached 5 pound telephoto lens up to your ear.
Parent
Re:No, I did not read the article... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Cheap my eye (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cheap my eye (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Cheap my eye (Score:5, Insightful)
Repeat after me folks: megapixels are just as much of a myth as megahertz.
There are plenty of cases where a manufacturer has slapped a 5 megapixel sensor into a camera that was originally designed for a 3MP sensor, and the picture quality actually decreased.
Lenses, sensor pixel size (a 35mm full frame sensor at 6MP will deliver far better quality than the tiny 8MP sensors found on point-and-shoots), image processing, etc are all far more important to image quality than megapixels. And there's just not enough room in your pocket for a phone that has a decent lens and a big sensor.
Parent
Re:Cheap my eye (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.photo.net/equipment/digital/sensorsize
http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/key=Pixel_Quality [dpreview.com]
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/counting
As for lens quality, it ought to be obvious that a better lens will provide better image quality. If it's not, go here [canoneos.com], click on a couple lenses, and look at their MTF chart. If you're not familiar with how to read an MTF chart, here's the low-down: a better lens has all the lines closer to the top of the chart (for a more detailed explanation, check out Canon's glossary [canon.com]). Pick a couple lenses of comparable focal length, look at their MTF chart, and then compare the price. For instance, look at the 80-200mm f/4-5.6 compared with the 70-200mm f/4L or f/2.8L. The 80-200mm is currently going for $120. The 70-200mm f/2.8L is currently going for a little over $1100. FYI, lenses with an "L" in the name are their pro series. There's a lot more to a lens than just its ability to resolve detail and show contrast, of course -- look here [slashdot.org] for more info on why pro lenses are so much more expensive (and better) than consumer-grade lenses. And by "consumer grade" I'm not even getting close to the level of a camera phone lens.
Parent
Who hates that all-in-device (Score:5, Insightful)
I can fit my phone in my pocket, I dont want to have a huge slab of metal in my pocket, just a small thing that is portable and unobtrusive.
If I wantd a PDA I would have bought one..same w/ digicam and music player.
Anyway integrated devices are usually inferior to their standalone counterparts.
Who's with me? Keep those devices separate!
Re:Who hates that all-in-device (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Very misleading and uninformed (Score:4, Informative)
I know this because I had a girlfriend that worked for phone acquistion and deployment for Cingular. THEY almost ALWAYS paid full wholesale price for the phones. The Ericcsons they used to give away cost them $45 each. They cost Ericcoson something close to $19 to make.
How about just a phone that works? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep.... It looks like capitalism is still working (Score:5, Insightful)
We've seen this before in the PC card market (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when you had to BUY a sound card for your PC? What about paying $200 for modem card? NIC? Video card. Now you get the kitchen sink on most motherboards. And the components are pretty decent.
This seems to be par for the course. If the process can be put on a chip then function consolidation will surely follow.Re:We've seen this before in the PC card market (Score:4, Interesting)
In the case of a PC, the integrated motherboard costs less than the original motherboard, a sound card, and a network card.
In the case of a phone, the integrated PDA+phone is far more expensive than a much better PDA, and a phone.
If only this weren't true, I would be a happy, happy person right now, as I'm looking for a new phone and a new PDA, and am hating that I can't afford the combined systems.
Parent
boo hoo (Score:4, Interesting)
the micro chip companies are forced into brutal competition for a market that is shrinking into a single commodity gadget, the phone.
Free country, free market, free economy. If you don't like the heat- get out of the kitchen. Nobody's forcing you to sell low-margin products, and they have nobody to blame but themselves if they're only making stuff for cell phones. It's not like they woke up one morning and said "oh my gosh, someone changed our product lineup to be just stuff for cellphones!" Furthermore, I don't really believe it- plenty of semiconductor companies make stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with cell phones.
If it -is- true, who's to say this shakeup is a bad thing? That's the wonderful thing about a competitive market- if a company can't make a profit on a device, they won't make it. If there are too many companies making a widget, the price will go low and only the strong companies will survive.
The fantastic thing is that if the strong companies start to suck, well- a market forms for an competitor because there will be something to differentiate their product. Not only that, but if it's better- they can price it higher, and (gasp!) make more money!
Raising the Bar (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that the market is "shrinking", it's that the low end devices that aren't very good and only sold because of their price can be easily replaced. It will be at least a few years before people's cellphones replace their digital cameras on vacations or give up their iPod minis.
And note that no one is claiming that the GBA is going to die because of cell phones. They may have games and such, but the GBA is a whole other calibar. Well made devices have nothing to fear. The portable games that are going to suffer are the little Tiger handhelds and such.
Consumers, by and large, only stand to gain from this. Survival of the fittest garuntees that most of these devices will be around for a while, and the substandard stuff will fall off the market. Which consumers lose?
And to those of you that say "I just want a phone that's a phone, dang it", we're in the gadget phase right now. It's all new. Wow, I can get a cell phone that can do THAT? As novelty wares off and people see that the extra features aren't that great by and large, you'll start to see simpler phones. Just because I might be able to get phone/camera/MP3 player/PDA/etc for free with my contract doesn't mean I want the thing around. Bulk and interface often suffer. The "cell-phone-only" will come.
Phones are profitable (Score:5, Interesting)
And in fact, that's what they do.
Of course, for tax purposes, it is best if they show on the books that they lose money. As we've seen in many industries (manufacturing, healthcare, defense, MLB, etc) it's rather easy to show enough loss to avoid paying taxes. It is fact that corporations (at least in the USA) pay many fewer taxes as they did 5 years ago. The primary reason? Tax avoidance through "magic" accounting techniques.
If there was no money in the business, the shareholders would put a stop to it - after all, most cell phone manufacturers make many other products. But amazingly, looking at the past 5 years, share prices remain fairly stable compared to the overall tech sector.
OMG! e-mail's gonna kill the postal industry!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that one? When everyone would use e-mail exclusively (since it was FREE!) and the post office, fedex, and ups would be out of business in 5 years. I don't have stats to back it up, but I suspect the Internet has actually helped the postal industry a ton. Okay, maybe people write and send fewer snail letters, but mail-order shopping and e-bay resulting shipments (more shipping $$$) have gone through the roof!
I can't predict how the gadget consolidation will play out, but I suspect there will be wonderful surprises in store down the road. Shouldn't all of these portable technical gadgets glob into one utility-pod anyways? Why should I be forced to fumble with seperate gadgets? What if they could get to a point where they build stackable phones with interchangeable camera modules, MP3 modules, holo-projection modules, etc... You could click 3-6 of these lego-like bricks togeather and have your own custom utility-pod that best suits YOUR needs.
Besides, once they get all the gadgets figured out and have nothing left to worry about, maybe they can finally provide unbroken signal coverage between my house and my office: A 15 mile commute in a frickin Atlanta suburb with a county population of 2.4 MILLION people. Incompetant bastards.
This could indeed come to pass . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . unless the phone manufacturers allow themselves to be shot in the proverbial foot by the major telcos by crippling the functionality of their devices with draconian DRM restrictions.
You better believe that ALL of the telcos are very keen to make you pay for every music file you load onto your phone, regardless of whether you already legally own the song on a CD or not.
You can see the marketing opportunities now, can't you? Just wait and you will see them advertising this "great new service" to their long suffering customer base.
"Dial 013013 followed by your selected song number from our extensive* catalog and your song will be delivered to your phone instantly!" (and billed to your phone account accordingly of course)
New phone? Well just dial 013013 again to re-order! It's that easy, and you'd better believe it baby!
From the perspective of your major Telco, there is no money in it for them when their customers can transfer mp3s from their PC's to their phones, and seeing that the phone manufacturers sell their phones to the Telco's (and not end users) the Telco's have significantly more control over the functionality (and therefore dysfunctionality) of phone devices than Microsoft will ever have in the PC world.
Labelling (Score:5, Interesting)
Phones are not making money? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's even one of those folding keyboards with bluetooth coming out that I'd love to buy next for it.
And if that's not enough, how about all the neat Symbian programs you can buy for it, like turning it into the ultimate universal remote control [psiloc.com]
And the camera in it feeds my addiction to mobog.com [mobog.com].
Anyhoo, sucker cost me $420. Someone made some coin on it.
I've owned a few PDAs including a Casio E100, E110, and a Dell Axim. Junk basically, and using imap or pop with pocket outlook is ultra painful. Too big and that resulted in me never carrying the thing. To get wireless internet access through the thing was another hassle.
This (nokia 6600 phone) puppy is just the right size for me.
I hate multi-function phones (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not need a camera, voice memos, video games, downloadable polyphonic symphonic psychedelic ringtones, an MP3 player; barely functional text messaging, even more barely functional email, or a "web browser" that makes driving to the New York Public Library and looking up what I need to know seem efficient (I live in Virginia); Bluetooth, Compact Flash, color high-resolution display requiring exponents to describe, inaudible speaker phone, or a multi-billion dollar ad campaign that causes seizures in small children and house pets to tell me how this new phone is going to Change My Life Forever! (TM)
I do need good signal handling and audio; a phone book designed for people who actually a) read, and b) make phone calls; maybe a vibrating ringer available at every ring volume, not just the top and bottom; and a user interface that doesn't remind me of the very first freshman programming project of the year. For fancy occasions, an alarm clock can be nice.
A provider network that wasn't engineered by beauty-school dropouts would be nice, too, but that's another issue.
-Edgar
And this is why I quit the cell industry (Score:5, Insightful)
I got a job at Nextel right out of the Air Force, and enjoyed learning the technology. Nextel had a great niche with the wireless 2-way, and a lead on the competition. However, I worked for an overbearing boss and they didn't do diddly squat for training.
Sprint PCS wooed me away with training. I finished my MBA while working at Sprint, and they started sending me to classes. I learned all about wireless, packet data, network admin, etc. But the more I looked into the business itself, the more strongly I believed there is no way they couldn't fall into becoming a commodity. For the uninitiated, a commodity means consumers really don't recognize a brand as distinguishing. Walk down a toothpaste aisle, and you'll see a market kicking and screaming to NOT become a commodity (when after all, it's all just PASTE).
The words were there and the media hype came out in droves during 2.5 G (circuit switched data, 56k max) and 3 G (packet data, games, cameras, etc). However, I knew from my days at Nextel, that consumers were fickle and really just looked at the bottom line. I had a VP at Nextel explain it this way, 80% of the market are consumers, yet they're 20% of the revenue. If you hike the price they jump to a competitor. The business niche will not jump because of the costs of switching, plus they're 80% of the revenue.
If you look at Revenue per User (RPU), Nextel has been leading every year, without exception, since wireless started taking off. So what does that leave the competition with? Consumers who drive up costs by: Switching, calling customer service, wanting new phones, etc etc.. My source of prices are quite old, but I'll approximate the costs from the late 90s. The cell phone cost the original manufacturer about $800 to build (R&D, manufacturing, etc). The sell it to the carriers for about $500. The carrier in turn sells it to you for $250. So the carrier and manufacturer are banking $550 of goodwill.
From the consumer's standpoint, they really don't care who their service provider is. They just want to dial 7/9/10 digits (don't dial 1, the switch just strips it off...dial using 7 or 9 digits) and hear a human voice at the other end. More importantly, they want the call to stay up. So the phone doesn't matter, nor the service. This is a receipe for a commodity. Now factor in there are 5 or 6 players in the market. Each has identical networks that costs billions to manage. Imagine if you had 5 runs of twisted pair, from 5 local telephone companies, running into your house. One will make money, while the other 4 lie dormant. It's not a straight analogy, but my point is that the market can't bear these many providers.
This is why you saw the mergers around 1999/2000. I really think we need one or two more for efficiency reasons. However, even with a merger, it's still becoming a commodity with intense pressure to keep costs down. In my opinion, wireless is heading down the dead end which the wirelines are already going down....
[/police]
Naturally companies whine about it, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, the ultimate result of this process is going to be a device about the size of a current PDA that is simultaneously a cell phone, music player, camera, and hyper-powerful PDA. It'll do just about everything and it'll run on whiskey (remember those fuel cells?). That's almost as good as magic, folks. And I can thank my phone company for being ruthless and forcing the cell phone suppliers to drop their skirts and spread their legs. It's about TIME the phone company did something for me.
Second, the people who are taking it in the shorts are a bunch of suits who don't care one little iota about me. You can't claim this is going to hurt my fellow programmers; the suits already outsourced us. You can't claim it's going to hurt secretaries or clerks, because they'll find plenty of work elsewhere. The ONLY people getting hurt here are the suits -- the managers in charge who can't make their companies profitable under the phone companies' terms. So who cares if they stay rich? Who cares if their profits drop? Who cares if they live or die?
All this means to me is, a bunch of rich, arrogant SOBs who never did anything for me are going to take it right in the shorts while I watch and revel in the action. And, I get a new, fancy cell phone in a couple of years that does everything but get naked for me.
Sounds like a winner! Hoist a pint, boys!
Capitalism is self-correcting (Score:5, Insightful)
Telcos driving manufacturers into bitter competition because they're demanding more for less money? This is a self-correcting problem.
If increased competition turns profits into losses, eventually manufacturers will begin to leave the market, leaving fewer manufacturers. Fewer manufacturers means that those who remain are in a market with decreased competition, which drives prices up.
Combining Products (Score:4, Funny)
There have been countless times that I've been stuck somewhere for hours, had an electronic device with buttons and a screen, and could not play Tetris. So much boredom could have been avoided.
Business in general close to profitless (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a look at the graph here. [jimdeegan.com]
Shareholder dividends dropped like a rock from 1981 at 6% to 1.5% in 2002.
Most corp revenue goes to for materials and employees. Most corp "profits" are never given to shareholders (the owners).
So, I say again, businesses in general are close to profitless anyway.
What I think this article REALLY implies is that decreasing REVENUES are making impossible for some businesses to even stay afloat.
No revenue means no employees.
What about sound quality? Why is it so bad now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good! (Score:4, Informative)
So, you are not allowed to hold on to a cell phone while driving because it is dangerous, but, these, evidentially, are not:
- smoke
- chow down on that big mac
- fumble with the radio
- read the newspaper
- tend to a crying child in the back seat
- apply makeup or shave (hopefully, the correct conjunction is "or")
That's why I hate cell phone driving laws - either target ALL driving distractions or target none of them.
It would be the same thing as having "assault with a knife", "assault with a bat", and "assault with a lead pipe" laws instead of "assault with a deadly weapon".
The only studies that I have seen quoted that supported cell-phone laws were ones that asked "Was a cell-phone in use during the accident?" not "What driving distractions were present during the accident?" Those are two completely different questions.
The studies that I have seen that list out all driving distractions clearly show things other than cell-phones are leading factors - I think "tuning radio" and "smoking" were the top two.
Parent
Re:Good! (Score:5, Informative)
Driving distractions:
Outside person, object or event: 29.4%
Adjusting radio/cassette/CD: 11.4%.
Other occupant: 10.9%.
Moving object in vehicle: 4.3%
Other device/object: 2.9%
Adjusting vehicle controls: 2.8%
Eating and/or drinking: 1.7%
Using/dialing cell phone: 1.5%
Smoking: 0.9 %
Other distractions: 25.6%
Unknown: 8.6%
Source: University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center
My memory was a little off about the items (and order on the list).
Parent
Re:One for all... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to hold a really really heavy device to my ear to hear the phone because it has a gigantic hard drive built into it. And there's no way that a phone-integrated digital camera is ever going to really replace the high-end markets for other devices (think digital SLR, powerful computer, etc).
There's some integration of devices going on now, but it's always a crippled integration. The trend is encouraging, but I'm not sure it's ever really going to lead to anything.
Parent
Re:One for all... (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to be able to get my cheaper, smaller, thinner, better call phone without crap in it.
Parent
Re:Price of phones (Score:5, Funny)
As a side note if you do decide to go through the phone bin make sure you smell the phone you want to take... you would be shocked at how many times the vibrate function is flagrantly abused on old phones.
No I am not joking.
Parent
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent