Nextel / Motorola Phone Is Significant Bellwether
Nextel and Motorola announced the the Motorola i860 phone with PTT and cameraphone functionality. What makes this phone so significant is not the simple fact that it is the first cameraphone combined with PTT, but more importantly that it is the first phone to ever be launched with PTx. PTx is loosely described by this hidden gem in the linked news story, "The handset also has the ability to Nextel Direct Send a contact information file, including names, phone numbers and e-mail address, from one i860 to another." I've been saying that mobile carriers should prepare for the PTx revolution, because it will change the way we communicate using mobile phones. The contact list, or 'buddy list' to use a trade name, becomes the center and the starting point of the entire communications experience, and by using the "push to x" button on the phone, the user will launch any type of communication session from PTT, to phone call, to 'send picture', and beyond. Presence will be an important component of this buddy list. (For more on what PTx is, see my post of March 30.) For this reason, carriers that control the contact list are in a much better position to 'own' the communication experience. Hmmm...makes you wonder about carriers like Cingular who are putting Yahoo! IM clients on Cingular phones... Do you think Yahoo! has thought of PTx and the carriers haven't? Nah, that'd never happen. And Yahoo!, AOL, MSN wouldn't be so audacious as to try to get a piece of the consumer telecommunications spend, would they?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
