Curt Sampson wrote:
> Well, this is not actually an unusual business strategy. Japanese
> companies do this all the time: release a three or four versions of a
> device before they finally get it right. It's basically just rather
> expensive but extremely accurate market research.
such a strategy may work if the device is not perfect in the beginning
and then fine-tuned later. but as pointed out in other posts, the n-gage
has many fundamental problems each of which could make it a complete
flop already by itself. if it doesn't sell well, how can you tell which
one was the main reason?
this reminds me of the i-mode start in europe: the one and only device
for it (n21i) was so bad it just had to fail and the only result of this
"market research" was that even in europe phones have to meet certain
standards of size, battery live and usability, it therefore didn't tell
very much about the acceptance of i-mode itself. just like that, the
n-gage's failure would only mean you can't sell crap devices but not
allow more interesting assumptions about the concept of merging phone
and console in general.
on the other hand, if the n-gage was a success that would of course tell
quite a lot..
oliver
Received on Sun Oct 26 18:34:32 2003