msnbc.msn.com — Culture is surely a part, as are the U.S. wireless carriers themselves. Consumers here tend to be multi-device users. They like a phone in their pocket, but there's also a laptop or desktop involved in daily computing...
Sep 7, 2006 View in Crawl 4
linuxpenguinSep 7, 2006
@GottIstTot:Nothing's stopping you from communicating. If you're at a fancy restaurant (or anywhere else where people might find your cellphone annoying) you can always talk to other people there.There are times when you shouldn't talk on your phone unless it's real important, for example:- a nice sit-down restaurant- in class- a movie
midnightbrewerSep 8, 2006
"We're behind because our country is much larger than Asian countries with modern wireless networks. It is much easier to update the wireless infrastructure in Korea than over the whole US."We're behind because the telcos and cell phone carriers don't care. It has much less to do with geography than Americans go on about, and a lot more to do with the government footing the bill for these promised network upgrades and the telcos simply pocketing the money without so much as lifting a finger to actually fulfill their promises. Yay capitalism!As for 1.5 years behind? Good grief. I'd put it at more like 4. My friends' cell phones in America are just now catching up to where my Japanese cell phone was in 2002. Those American friends of mine who have gone home are none too happy, believe me.
harmless168Sep 8, 2006
Why should it be rude to talk on a cellphone in a public place? I'm stting in a park by myself, and I'm rude if I talk on the phone?EDIT: Ok I get it. When you said public place, I thought ANY public place.
acidosisSep 8, 2006
No. All self respecting people call it a "manual"Damn stickshift, in my day we...(Carries on grumbling)
bigmogSep 8, 2006
During the 9/11 attacks and hurricane Katrina disastor, the cell phone bandwidth was jammed packed because land service was down.
bigmogSep 8, 2006
Our killer app is SMS. Blackberry proved that.
happyscrappySep 9, 2006
I charge my phone every Tuesday, whether it needs it or not. That's 7 days.How's your 3-4 days look now?That's a Sony-Ericsson w810i.I have a Nokia N80 too. If I turn off the 3G and don't use any of the features, the battery goes 5 days. If I try to surf the web at all, I'm lucky to get 2. This despite having an enormous battery."Battery life is okay. Can last for 2 days!" - CNet Asia about the N80.<a class="user" href="http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39051199,39096644p,00.htm">http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39051199,39096644p,00.htm</a>And we have several of the fancier phones. Try one of the ones with the 640x480 displays from a year ago or the 3mp cameras a year ago (very much at the forefront of the curve). They're huge and have awful battery life.
winmac96Sep 9, 2006
If one compares the EU and the US by GDP, they are about equal at roughly $11 trillion annually. But per capita, the U.S. have more buying power than in the E.U. (>$40,000 compared to $28,000). With this info, people in America have more discretionary spending income than any country in the world! And that's a FACT...As for Moto hardware designs, just look at the trend in the past two years to see the results. They speak louder than I can write here in Digg. They are currently at #2 at 14% share. On top of that is the rave reviews of the new RAZR V3 and the Q Smartphone. They should have good 4th quarter sales.As for UI design. To each his own on this one. My good UI design philosphies are another's rubbish.
qoogirlSep 10, 2006
I agree with you both. The cost to send messages (SMS) are overpriced. This is another reason why text messages have a slow pick up in the US vs. Japan. Japanese carriers generally charge users about $0.02 USD for a text message, $0.04 USD for a multi-media (picture-attachment) message. The rates for sending in-network messages is also cheaper or free, making it an incentive to put friends on your network. However, the price of actually calling people locally in Japan is extremely expensive; hence text messages must be cheap and convenient, or people will not use your carrier/service at all. This is the exact opposite in America where airtime seems unbelievably cheap in comparison when one is on a plan. Another perplexing problem with American cellphone providers could be the idea of "e-mail" on a cellphone. Japan actually has users create their cellphone e-mail accounts (which can be changed various times to avoid SPAM, etc.). These e-mail accounts are unlike text messages in that they can receive from virtually any other e-mail provider without distorting the messages too much. They also allow for around 10,000 characters to be input in a standard, non-multimedia message. Most American carriers that are not smartphones max out at around 1/10 of that if I am not mistaken? Americans have a greater reliance on personal computers because of this, and have come to see smartphones as the only way of sending e-mail on-the-go. Occasionally, I'd rather forward e-mail to someone's cellphone rather than talking to them, but price is the most important thing (especially since you have to pay to receive your SMS in America at the same rate people send it at!), and using a computer or calling directly are the cheaper options. =(
smcavoySep 14, 2006
And Canada is a year behind the US... and lets not even talk about cell plan rates... ugh...but in the broadband dept. Canada is a good bit ahead of the US... odd
joshuakuhnOct 23, 2006
For everyone above that was fascinated with the Japanese cell phones getting email addresses, We have those here too... IE: Nextel is 1234567890@messaging.nextel.com, Sprint Blackberry is username@sprint.blackberry.net, Verizon is 1234567890@vtext.com, Cingular Blackberry is username@mycingular.blackberry.net, etc...I'll stick w/ my Nextel BB 7520... Thanks...