S60 Open to new features

Environmental issues are taken seriously in Nokia. The company is not perfect but results were decent. Nokia got overall score 7 from Greenpeace when Apple is one of the worst with less than 3 points (1-10 scale). It’s easy to make a small research among mobile phone manufacturers. Being environmental does not influence negatively to profits. Actually correlation seems to be opposite. I think Nokia could be even better in this field and make it part of brand promise. When average score is only 4, electronics industry as a whole has long way to become a green industry.

I make a confession. I have never downloaded a DRM protected song and paid about it (midi ringing tones can not be counted because they are not really songs:-). I might be an exception among people working around me or reading this. In normal music consumer group, I definitely belong to majority.

Why I haven’t done it? First of all it’s about owning things. I have grown up in C-casette and LP era. I have had tangible things, real LP covers and content has been quite permanent and first of all if something gets broken in normal circumstances it’s one cassette, LP or CD, not the whole collection. I’m still CD person, because I want to have quality. First requirement for downloaded song is that I get CD quality or better. Almost CD quality – end of discussion. Spending thousands of euros to hifi and playing mp3s is like having Andreja Premium and using Nescafe coffee. Music having less than CD quality should have 70-90% discounted price compared to CD. If it has DRM limitations, and can be played only in some brand players, reasonable price is around 10% of original. I’m here talking as user. Record companies seem to have a different view.

Target group or digital music downloaders don’t care about quality that much. DRM is bigger issue. If you buy digital content, you want to play it every possible digital player. Standard wars like Beta and WHS was painful for consumers but magnitude of problem today is just huge compared to old tape wars. So current system is C.R.A.P, but what would be the the perfect system for everyone? Let your imagination run and not think about technical constraints too much. Artist should have their share, recording studios, distributors and marketers who bring the names known by public. Did I forget someone who is adding value in music market?

Meanwhile I continue to listen mp3s ripped from my original CDs and superb radio stations what we have here in Helsinki. Call me old-fashioned, but I call current systems primitive.

It’s good to be back. Holidays are always too short, but I think we Finns are quite lucky in this respect. 4 or 5 weeks is enough to get batteries full.

During the summer, I didn’t install a single new application to my phone. No single idea about new features or useless features. Usually it has taken longer to clean up my mind about work related issues, but I’m certainly getting better.

But back to business and let’s go back 9 years in time. Internet was young. Broadband even younger. Charging models changing. For example AoL changed it’s pricing from time based to flat monthly fee. I found interesting story: “Let's face it: Flat-rate online pricing is insupportable”

Everybody should back off, let AOL admit it made a mistake and allow the company to reinstitute its former pricing structure where people paid for what they used.

You know what happened.

Now in quite recent news I noticed this story. Flat-rate mobile web access 'doomed'.

Industry pricing is moving from flat-rate to subscription-based access," said Bernt Ostergaard, research director for business telecoms services in Europe at Current Analysis.

Industry has never been in flat-rate so how can it be moving out from it? There has been some flat rate offers here and there but that’s not a mainstream.

It’s quite fun to follow how this issue is handled inside telecom industry. We have created protocols which are suitable for wireless, consuming less power, less latency, less overhead (e.g. WAP). Very soon after that some folks are marketing data hungry applications to very same operators and finally operators are worried about P2P, which is too data hungry application. Just Yes, I know, discussion is about money not really about amount of data.
Flat fee is considered bad for mobile because some people will use it too much, for P2P, and consuming too much network resources. Similar concern exists in the fixed broadband side. Has been there in the beginning and rising again now in P2P era.

Fixed broadband charging is based on maximum data speed. This artificial limitation system is working fine. I don’t see any reason why similar model wouldn’t work in mobile. Different price for 64, 128, 384kbs. Some mobile operators have started to use this model and my prediction is that this is the future model regardless of the differences of fixed and mobile.