Cell Phone Users Can Now Keep Up With Daily Comics
from the missing-the-point dept
As the various wireless companies try to expand their data offerings (especially since there’s now some evidence that people are actually paying for content on their mobile phones), they keep coming up with new wireless “applications” such as offering your favorite comic strips on your mobile phone. The idea apparently came to the creator of it while he was away and missing access to his favorite comics. Now, companies like Verizon are charging $2.35/month just to access Garfield. Beyond the shock that anyone in their right mind would spend any amount of money to read Garfield, I wonder how long this can last. This isn’t the type of content mobile phones are made for. When it comes to content, I just want full web access on my mobile phone. I don’t want specialized “pay for” content like this. The applications I’m interested in aren’t pure content – but things that actually take advantage of the fact that they’re on a mobile phone. For example, location based services make sense. Ringtones (as annoying as they are) make some amount of sense. Pure content is already on the web. Getting people to use wireless data is going to be about offering them services that take advantage of the very fact that they’re wireless. It’s not going to be about repackaging content that’s available on the web and charging for it.
