More Evidence That People Want Phones To Communicate

from the they-are-communications-devices dept

Thu, Mar 31st 2005 3:09am — Mike Masnick

I've been ranting a bit lately about how the mobile carriers have gotten completely carried away with the idea that "content is king." They are forgetting that mobile phones are communications devices first. Almost no one is buying a phone for broadcast style content first. They buy it to communicate -- creating content for each other. Broadcast style content is an additional "nice to have," but it shouldn't be the focus, and the carriers shouldn't be crippling the communications functions just to support the less desirable broadcast ones. Well, here's a bit more evidence to support that viewpoint. Despite all the hype and talk about mobile content and ringtones, messaging still accounts for 85% of all youth mobile data revenue. In other words, they're chatting with each other much, much more than they're downloading the latest ringtone.

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Tim, 31 Mar 2005 @ 4:24am

No disagreement
This is precisely why I refuse to get a 3G phone. I have simple demands - it's bad enough that people call me on the dratted thing; SMS has its place, bluetooth is invaluable for headset and iSync purposes, and at a *push* the idea of a phone-camera is beginning to grow on me (something like 3 MMS sent this year so far). Why I would want football results, let alone crappy tiny images of someone kicking a dead cow into a net, I have no idea. As for ringtones, $HOWMUCH for a bunch of annoying beeps?! Drop dead!
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