It is one of those immutable laws of business. If you charge too high a margin, even if
you have a de facto monopoly, someone is going to find a way of stealing your market. Ask Telkom. The likes of Storm have made a good living out doing just that!
The likes of local entrepreneurs Yeigo and UK farmboys TruPhone have been beavering away to develop the ability to do VoIP over 3G or WiFi using one a bog standard cell phone. OK, so one of the new bog standard phones (with WiFi/3G etc), but you get my drift?
Now when the Google guys set their sights on that market, you'd better sit up and take note, I don't care who you are and how smart you are.
CrunchGear has an article on Google wooing the mobile phone manufacturers.
I finished reading "The Google Story" yesterday; you can't help being seriously impressed with these guys. They are aggressively innovative, irrepressibly keen to take on huge challenges and have a war chest that is rapidly making Microsoft's look commonplace!
If Google intends taking on the cellular industry with a free phone (and they have managed to make a serious amount of cash with the concept "free"!), the cellular industry and others who are challenging them better take a good hard look at the threat to their business plans.







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