Saturday, February 19, 2011

Middle men

http://www.pcworld.com/article/219776/rim_nokia_docomo_dodge_googles_dumb_pipe_menace.html

OK, losers consortium has taken shape. But, what are they driving at? The whole discussion is centered around how to enable the service provider to be the middle man and extort money from poor end user. With what face is Nokia and RIM going to face end customers now? A smart phone today costs 20-30k (INR). After taking such huge amounts from end customer, they want to create means for the letting the service provider loot the customer! Shame on them.

May be your service provider is subsidizing your phone. However, that reminds me about the phones (LG-LSI110) that Reliance used to sell for 3K! I am pretty much sure that it didn't have electronics and plastics worth even Rs. 1000. However, the phone came with the note that its cost is 10K and it is owned by Reliance. This was about 7 years back. I doubt there will be any change today. Anyway, would you prefer to get a smart phone at a subsidized cost when you pretty well know that this amount will be recovered from you through monopolistic practices of the service provider?

Well, I recently used a Galaxy tab to download and test an application (ZXing). The ability to customize your smart phone by pushing an apk to it after enabling USB debugging was probably the only reason needed for paying 30K for that device. Well, Nokia, go back and make some good Android phones and I will buy them (Yes, I would prefer to buy android from Nokia over any other vendor) when they become available.