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After almost two months (overall) spent here in California, I’m getting more and more proofs that the US mobile market is immature.
I will try to summarize my point of view in regards of three main areas, that I personally consider some key areas where vendors and operators should focus their attention.
Coverage
US is a big country, so coverage is really not good in many places. In Italy, you can get a great coverage on top of a mountain right now, while the other day in Saratoga (close to Palo Alto) both my mobile phones (AT&T and T-Mobile) were unusable. Something really rare in Italy nowadays. Besides this, many areas are poorly covered, so the signal strength is very low.
Freedom of choice
Why do I have to get only those crappy and old mobile phones that mobile operators include in their plans? In Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, Sacramento and many other towns, no way to get one of the latest Nokia N-series. I’ve been told that only three “specialized” shops have that stuff in the Bay area. Are you serious? “Specialized“?!? Something that you can get in any shopping centre in Italy? At least four people, looking at my N95, told me “what a great phone, European right? I love it, but can’t get it here”. Those are “normal” people that go to Walmart or Best Buy, and can’t get it.
The best you can get seems to be a Blackberry, great for emails but… very limited for all the other features. The problem here is that in Italy we use to be free to choose whatever mobile phone we want, then we plug whatever SIM card (aka operator) we want in it. That makes the market less dominated by operators that, on the contrary, must struggle to retain their users, since 90% of the market is not “linked” to any specific operator through a contract.
Pay to receive a call?
That’s what happen in Europe when you are roaming in a foreign state, but that’s what happen in the US if I call my friend that lives one block far!. In Italy, it would be a market killer. Outbound calls are generally a little bit more expensive, but you don’t pay to receive a call. I can assure you that it helps.
What Nokia is doing in the US with the blogger relation program is great, but this market needs more. There is a huge potential here but my perception is as US is 3-4 years behind. In many shops, I found mobile phones that I already have in my reliquary…
January 29th, 2008 at 3:45 am
Being charged for inbound calls is an artifact of the fact that you are not charged for “local” calls when calling from a landline in the U.S.. Since the FCC didn’t want there to be a distinction between mobile and fixed lines, the mobile operator charges for both incoming and outgoing calls, at least on most plans.
I get continually frustrated with my brethren at Nokia for not pushing for a stronger physical presence in our shops. Not just the operator shops, but places like Best Buy, WalMart, or Costco. To break the mentality that you can only get those phones in Europe, people have to be able to SEE the damn phones!
January 29th, 2008 at 7:06 am
I totally agree. A person told me he was interested to buy the N95, but mine was the first one he could see (he was happy for that). WalMart, Costco etc. are the right places to engage the “normal” people.