[sdiy] OT: Cell Phones Becoming Profitless

[steve begin]

What bothers me is that if this article is true, we are probably all paying
for the features on everybody elses cell phones.  It means this is part of
the reason I have to spend a two hundred and fifty a year or so on a
bare-bones plan just so i can have the phone when i need to make or recieve
those 3 or 4 calls a month.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott Gravenhorst" <music.maker at gte.net>
To: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 10:01 AM
Subject: [sdiy] OT: Cell Phones Becoming Profitless


> Sorry for the non-DIY content, but this made me smile wryly this morning.
> Anything to thwart the proliferation of damnable cellphones is a very good
> thing IMHO.
>
> This tidbit comes from: http://slashdot.org/
>
> I wonder...  If cellphone manufacture becomes a thing of the past, what
> then?  Will the semi mfgrs tool up for more OTAs and tranny arrays?  Or
> will we get a sh!tpile of crappy ringtone synths (without even MIDI!)
until
> we vomit?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Cell Phones Becoming Profitless
> Communications
> Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday July 29, @09:49PM
> from the imploding-markets dept.
> saccade.com writes "EE Times has a fascinating article on how electronics
> companies are being sucked into a profitless spiral by the cell phone
> market. More and more of the small consumer gadgets are being folded into
> the phone: camera, music player, PDA, GPS, etc. So the market for
non-phone
> gadgets is slowly going away as the phone picks up more functions.
However,
> consumers don't buy most phones; they are given away (or sold very cheap)
> by the service providers as hooks to get people to sign up for mobile
> service. So the service providers are demanding (and getting) rock-bottom
> prices for fancy phones they can give away, and the micro chip companies
> are forced into brutal competition for a market that is shrinking into a
> single commodity gadget, the phone."
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
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>
> -- Scott Gravenhorst | LegoManiac / Lego Trains / RIS 1.5
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>
>