Tony Chan wrote
>Does anyone know why in the world Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola, Siemens
are NOT
>supplying handsets for Euro-imode?
>One reason might be that they really do want to go up against DoCoMo for
>domination of the wireless Internet (is WAP vs imode still alive?). Another
might
>be that they just can't be bother to adopt their products for Euro-imode.
The last
>might be that DoCoMo is consciously omitting them from the suppliers list
and only
>wants companies which it can control, a la Japanese handsets vendors, to
make any
>money out of E-mode (is this revenge for the whole WAP challenge?).
Nokia and DoCoMo are best buddies now and it is likely that Nokia will
supply the 7650 series
to DoCoMo in future. Furthermore D is supposedly providing input on the
future incarnations of
the Symbian OS to be used in 3G phones (Nokia is a partner in the Symbian
project.) Ollila and
Tachikawa play golf together (according to some industry joke somewhere that
got lost in translation).
As for SonyEricsson et al - those that work for these companies are best
suited to answer. In short,
Japanese manufacturers are better suited as they know the product inside-out
and unlike the European
model where Handset manufacturers run the show, the Japanese vendors are
happy to let DoCoMo determine
the marketing and product development of future handsets - so in essence
your last point, Tony.
I think the WAP part is irrelevant to the bigger picture. D was once a
member of the Forum (although
more a spy than a participating member)
The product development cycle for handsets is about 18months for Nokia and
2years plus for the other
guys so it is likely that they have been caught short by a European launch.
Ericsson were once friends of the "Great Satan" [disclaimer etc; not
author's viewpoint blah]
so it is likely that Nokia will leverage their relationship with DoCoMo to
keep them excluded. Add to that
Sony and D have had their differences over branding in the past - hence Sony
has been looking abroad for new markets.
GB
Received on Fri Feb 8 12:02:55 2002