Firm Finally Gets Around To Lowering Forecasts For Video Calling
from the took-long-enough dept
Despite the fact that people have never been interested in video calling, and there's no evidence that anyone will ever care for it, some analysts are just starting to realize it may not live up to its hype. Research firm Strategy Analytics is sharply lowering their estimates for the business, though still predicting that by the year 2010 the area will generate $4 billion for carriers. The firm hedges their statement by arguing that carriers need to price this service "competitively", which sounds like analyst codeword for "give it away for free and use it as a customer retention tool". Naturally, their reasons for thinking it will grow include 3G uptake and cheaper video, but none of this would seem to matter if customers don't need to see the person they're talking to (or don't want to be seen by them). Firms like Strategy Analytics could avoid these mistakes by taking a more skeptical look at technology, though their clients would just go elsewhere to find some number that back up their plans.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.
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I don't know...
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i would get it
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I think it is useful
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This is a really short sited analysis
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Re: This is a really short sited analysis
So, forgive us for saying that perhaps it pays to wait for a little more evidence that people care -- because all the evidence we've seen says there's very little interest.
In the meantime, "sickened" seems like a pretty strong word. I can understand disagreeing and believing we're wrong... but sickened is quite a response.
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I say it sickens me because its really short sited especially for someone using a blog to get their point across.
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Re:
The history of failures suggests that there NEEDS to be a breakthrough, and it hasn't happened yet. So our analysis is pretty clear that unless there's a real breathrough we don't believe it's going to catch on, and we have history on our side.
In the meantime, I still think sickened is a strong response, and I have no idea the fact that "using a blog to get a point across" makes any difference at all. Please explain what that has to do with anything?
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Re:
The point we were making was simply this: over the past 40 years, it seems like every year some analyst firm comes out with a prediction that videophoning is about to be huge. And every year they're absolutely wrong. There also have been studies showing that most people just aren't that interested in videophoning to talk to most people. There are times when it might make sense, but it's just not worth paying anything extra for. So we felt that it was a bit silly for yet another analyst firm to claim that it was about to be huge, when there was no evidence that anything had changed.
Again, I don't see why that's worth sickening anyone. If you should be sickened by anyone, it's the analyst firms who keep predicting it will be huge, based on absolutely nothing.
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