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10 October 2002 |
Ted Leonsis says that he's "like a cockroach that survives the nuclear winter", and talks about AOL 8.0 (which is about new user-focused features) compared to its 6.0/7.0 predecessors (more AOL-focused: run more ads, sell more TimeWarner magazine subscriptions). AOL 8.0 may include voice features:
Q: So how will you make money in the future?
A: We have multiple drivers of the business. But first and foremost is the membership. [We have] lots of levers there. If [members] stay longer, there's less churn. And there are also new services we can sell. We're about to launch a whole series of voice-portal products.
Some 60% of our audience has one phone line. The new service alerts you when a call is coming in, and you can leave the caller a message, and they can leave you a message. Those will be packaged and sold as add-ons. There won't be a ton of these add-ons. Most of the innovations will go into the core price to make it more valuable to the customer.
9:01:46 AM 
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Philips spokesman: "The part we sold is important as well, but we were having trouble getting the business off the ground because of the slump in the telecommunications industry."
See also: the PR, and news for customers.
9:01:22 AM
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3G Lab's usability test shows that the Sony Ericsson beats the Nokia in immediate desirability, but lost in the long-term keepability for its poor user experience for picture-taking. Our own informal experience with both bears this conclusion out.
Members of the public were recruited to compare the usability of the Nokia 7650 and the SonyEricsson T68i. On first impressions test subjects preferred the T68i, but after completing a series of tasks they quickly switched allegiance to the 7650.
The SonyEricsson T68i immediately proved the most popular choice based on its stylish physical appearance and aesthetically pleasing design, but during testing participants became disappointed by the complexity of menu systems, poor screen display and phone build quality.
In contrast, the Nokia 7650 was initially found to be "chunky" and "brick-like", but on completing the tasks, all users said that they would purchase the Nokia phone over the SonyEricsson. The reasons given were that the Nokia had an easier and more intuitive menu system, the best screen size & display, and the phone was generally of higher build quality.
As Jakob Nielsen comments "you can't just show a design to people, you have to let them use it to get true feedback on the quality of the product".
[via gammatron]
9:00:45 AM
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USS Clueless says that US decisions to let the market decide which mobile technology platforms/transmission layers etc it liked (as opposed to Europe's/Brussels' decision to force the GSM standard on operators) means that US is in a good position to leapfrog Europe and Japan and lead mobile technology.
The conclusion is interesting on the technology front, and arguable on the business front (GSM works everywhere, pricing is far clearer/cheaper in Europe etc), though it's harder to argue with the comment that 3G/UMTS has so far been a washout. It's discussed, mostly negatively, on Slashdot here and mostly positively in other places.
8:47:44 AM
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"Nuance Communications, a supplier of speech-recognition software, is paying up to $55 million to not move into brand-new headquarters" (can that figure be right?). They and many other companies are taking a hit to avoid the long-lease commitments in Silicon Valley they made during the 199x-2000 tech boom.
8:47:14 AM
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MS is partnering with Intervoice to put SALT in ASP.Net and save call centre staffing costs
8:46:28 AM
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Commweb has its "socks knocked off" by a Siemens Enterprise Networks demo of something that sounds like VoiceXML, except that it's probably proprietary. Maybe they were excited by the fact that Siemens' middleware automatically turns HTML written by non-technical folk into IVR - it's not clear.
8:46:00 AM
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© Copyright 2003 rodcorp.
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