Luxury Mobile Operator For The Rich And Famous Downgraded To Be For Just The Modestly Wealthy
from the discount-luxury? dept
We found it a bit amusing last year when a Japanese company decided to open up a "luxury mobile phone service" for the super wealthy. Unlike some others, the goal of Voce wasn't to let people have super expensive, gold- or diamond-encrusted handsets. Instead, it was all about the service. For a $1500 signup fee and $500 per month, you'd get an ordinary Motorola RAZR with unlimited calling and data. They would give you new handsets every so often, but they'd also act as a 24-hour concierge service. Any personal help you needed was yours for the calling. Of course, there are plenty of concierge services out there, and it's not clear why it should ever be associated with a mobile operator. Apparently, the company has discovered that there really isn't a huge market for such things. Having already downgraded the upfront fee to $1,000 and the monthly hit to $400, they're now dropping the prices once again -- this time cutting them in half. It's now $500 to enter, and $200/month. They still insist there's a big market for such things, and plan to try to do a nationwide launch (rather than in just a few select cities) sometime next year -- but the fact that they've had to repeatedly drop their prices so much suggests that people don't really care very much about a mobile operator for the rich and famous. The people who could afford such a thing probably already have all of the concierge service they need -- and without anything in the way of a special phone to offer, it's hard to see the value. On top of that, when you're introducing a luxury brand, rapidly dropping your prices tends to suggest there isn't any real luxury there.
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
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Unless
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Unless
Unless by dorpus on Oct 3rd, 2006 @ 4:46am
There can be a service that grants a US phone number AND a Japanese phone number to the same cell phone, so international travellers don't have to have two phones. Despite the claims made by "international cell phone" services, you only get a number in one country, so other people calling you have to make international phone calls.
Can't one simply forward calls? It doesn't affect me so I haven't researched too deeply, but it doesn't seem like a huge problem especially with VOIP -- not to mention IPv6.
http://www.tollfreeforwarding.com/international-call-forwarding.html
Rates for a USA, California, Los Angeles phone number forwarding to Japan
Setup Fee:
$ 0
Monthly Minimum Fee:
$ 10
Japan:
$ 10 includes 61 minutes of call time per month when calls are forwarded to Japan. Additional call time is 16.5 ˘ per minute.
Japan-mobile:
$ 10 includes 26 minutes of call time per month when calls are forwarded to Japan-mobile. Additional call time is 39.0 ˘ per minute.
That's not amazing numerically speaking, but why would you need two phones?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Unless
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Unless
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Who can forget...
The e-mail service for millionaires (dumb enough not to simply get their own domain/server)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Never knew
I guess there is a sucker joining the internets eveyr day, huh? At $399 a MONTH they prolly only need one active user to make their little scam pay for itself and a few lunches....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Never knew
Can you do that on your poor little gmail account? huh?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Never knew
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Exchange
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Exchange
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
RE: Exchange
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'd pay $200/month for Unlimited voice/data
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Data
If it came with a Blackberry and Data plan, I'd be awfully interested in the deal.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
luxury mobile phones
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Exclusive 24k gold plated luxury mobile phones!
very classy site too!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Motorolla Cell Phones
Simply, Moto rocks for me ;)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Millionaires24
[ link to this | view in chronology ]