(keitai-l) Re: BlackBerry's launch in Japan

From: Nik Frengle <nfrengle_at_gmail.com>
Date: 09/20/06
Message-ID: <3b4a8f0e0609191607x35787eedj7a1e0fe6212b7483@mail.gmail.com>
I use both a Blackberry 7290 and a Nokia N70 with Visto software. There are
a few *really* nice things about the Blackberry, but I am not totally sure
how well they would translate in Japan:
*It actually gets mail *before* my company's Exchange server delivers it to
Outlook
*If it is in it's belt-clip thingummy, it vibrates whenever you have a mail,
and if you take it out of the belt clip within 30 seconds or so of it
buzzing, it opens the mail directly (unless some security nob sets it so
that you have to have a password to read anything)
*It automatically capitalises the word 'I'
*It knows that after a period, the chances are that the next word will be
capitalised, and it does it correctly nearly every time
The Visto software, on the other hand, while fast, doesn't do any of those
things. It is, however, available on the 6680 sold in Japan by Vodafone, and
presumably on the N71, though the website doesn't show that, which would
mean only one device in your pocket, which is pretty huge for me, and one
reason I keep forgetting my blackberry.
I think that a lot of why people swear by the Blackberry is that it does
what it does--e-mail--so well. Using it as a phone isn't great, and while
it's browser isn't perfect, it is better than my N70's, but it really shines
when you want to quickly retrieve or compose an email (I actually chose the
older-looking 7290 because it has a full qwerty keyboard, rather than an
interpretive input). There is something to be said for a device that really
does one thing very well, but you would probably want to keep your phone. In
which case Visto's 'good enough' probably wins.
Just my two pence.
On 9/19/06, Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 19 Sep 2006, ben@benmiller.com wrote:
>
> > The market may not be massive, but it will probably generate high
> > margins. Think in terms of crackberries for the financial community.
>
> Well, I've not looked into what the Japanese financial community is
> using these days, but I have been an IT guy in a bank in NYC, and
> watched (admittedly with not a only a little jealousy) the whole
> Blackberry thing pop up there in the late 1990s.
>
> (Though I have to admit, those Motorola two-way pagers with the
> four-line display from the early 90s (maybe it was about '94 I had one
> thrust upon me?) were, in some ways, almost as cool. Or is it just my
> nostalgia?)
>
> Anyway, having used the BB and Japanese keitai pretty extensively,
> I can't really see why you'd bother with one over the other, unless
> you were terribly, terribly critically inclined towards getting your
> messages ASAP and you couldn't actually be bothered to do a mail check
> after getting out of the subway.
>
> Essentially, Japanese phones have had for at least five years what the
> Blackberry has now: basic web and e-mail. Yeah, a better keyboard for
> English; but for Japanese people the numeric あかさたなはまらやお pad
> is, as far as I can tell, just fine. Certainly works for me.
>
> The BB is a good product, but, this just _so_ feels like one of those
> Japanese market entry failures.
>
> > ...are there reasons why the Japanese-language input product available
> > in the US (http://www.namikiteru.com/en/index1.html) would not be
> > relatively easy to implement?
>
> Well, first of all, it's obviously not easy enough that they can
> actually manage to roll out the ability to use the Japanese language in
> the initial release in Japan.
>
> That speaks volumes, actually, for something like this. Either they've
> done a brilliant job and gotten radio so cheap that they just don't care
> if it sells or not, or they've got huge problems ahead of them that
> they just don't realize. Given the number of foreigners I've met who
> don't understand why they don't use SMS here ("because such primitive
> technology sucks, and has sucked here since about 1999"--hello!), I
> would certainly not be surprised if it was the latter.
>
> Anyway, you tell me what the Blackberry does that makes it better than,
> oh, say, my P209i.
>
> cjs
> --
> Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   +81 90 7737 2974
>
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Received on Wed Sep 20 02:07:42 2006