One of the reasons for the massively quick turnaround in mobile phone hardware was (and still is) due to the pay-as-you-go method of hardware purchase. Basically, you get a new bit of hardware every 1-2 years subsidised by the operator. Its worked very well at getting old hardware out of the market and getting new stuff in with more value-add (sales) built in.
The Carrypad could also use this model too and i’m quite suprised that there’s been no succesful effort yet by a VOIP provider to team with someone like Pepperpad.
Of course, Nokia would be a great choice but I can imagine that approaching Nokia as a voip company would be very very difficult. Despite their apparent openness to VOIP. Maybe the voip market is all tied-up now. There’s not much room for new players, no big margins and to be honest, its not very exciting and ‘new’ for the average user.
However, if we look beyond VOIP to Video over IP, that would be nice! Maybe skype could offer a free Nokia next-gen 770 with a Skype video contract? My only problem with this is that Video telephony is a very fragmented technology. There are so many ‘solutions’ out there that interoperability could be a major stopping point.
One ‘fresh’ and well-standardised (relatively speaking) area and one seemingly part of the next big marketing push is looking like ‘live TV’. Unfortunately for the operators, live TV over 3G networks doesnt look like its really going to take off due to b/w requirements and/or cost and they’re all looking at DVB-H and DMB methods. Bit thats no bad thing really. I’m not convinced that ISP’s and mobile operators can afford to offer TV over IP in the near future. Its such a massive investment in head-ends and the time and cost of streaming rights negotiation, that i cant see many people getting involved.
Whether it be over DVB-H or DMB reciver, or over internet though, a Carrypad seems much better specified to offer the user a respectable viewing experience. The opportunity seems simple enough – a Carrypad needs to be developed with a DVB-H or DMB receiver in it, an S-Video output and offered for next to nothing with a TV contract.
Maybe in the future, our TV reveiver will actually be our Carrypad. With a high bandwidth bluetooth-like technology, you could actually send the TV signal to your big screen tv, projector (or broadcast it locally) wirelessly. I can imagine people sitting on the sofa doing all sorts of live voting, quiz and video-cam events on the TV. Oh the horror of it all!!
