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-- Treo on shelves in Hong Kong (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=21140)

Treo on shelves in Hong Kong

Handspring today announced retail availability of the company�s new compact communicator, the Treo 180 and 180g, to customers in Hong Kong.

http://www.visorcentral.com/content/Stories/1381-1.htm

rats, why do they always get to see the cool toys first?

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Why is Treo not available until March?

Is Handspring Stupid? They are introducing their products in Europe and the Pacific Rim, before the US? Now the product that was supposed to available in January is now not going to be available until March. (Check out http://www.marketwatch.com/news/yho...1D7AE2C66FFE%7D)

Maybe they know what they are doing.

when in the US?

By the time they show here in the US there will be something better close by. This must be punishment for the sales of the VisorPhone and data link here in the US. Besides let them use the other world markets to workout all the bugs so when it does show here we will have a more stable product. but it may backfire if sony comes out with a wireless device with their T line and going up against the plam i705 the treo could have a major problem here in the US. Oh and please give us visorphone users a good discount for our loyalty!!!

Maybe you guys are forgetting that Europe and Asia have excellent GSM coverage (except Korea/Japan).

So the dude in Hong Kong, flies to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand and he can use his Treo with roaming in all these countries and more. Not to mention that Hong Kong being a small island would have close to 100% GSM coverage also.

Sames goes for Europe, you go anywhere there and your Treo will work.

In the US people still complain about GSM lacking coverage etc.

GPRS is already out also, so they have a larger market to test GPRS on Treo as well when it becomes available. Hong Kong is also a good market for high tech gadgets.

Hope it does well their for Visor, cause PDA+Bluetooth+Cell Phone is a cheaper combination already. And both the PDA and Cellphone can be upgraded (colour, faster GPRS) unlike the Treo.

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Any Hong Kong members here?

If you get the Treo, tell us what you think about it.

Thanks.
Mike

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900/1800 or 900/1900?

I have heard that Treo is 900/1800 MHz in Asia (at least in Taiwan). Is it true? So the model is different from US model? Is US model 900/1900?
TIA

Yep, in established GSM markets, Treo uses the standard frequencies, for maximum compatibility with carriers.

In the US, it offers 900 for when you visit other places, and 1900 to use at home, instead of 1800.

Frankly, it seems most sensible to sell it first in places that have the infrastructure that's necessary to help it succeed, and it's good to see an US company looking beyond their shores like that. If they'd done the same with the Visorphone, they might well have sold a lot of them, but there was never a 900/1800 version.

Nigel.

Why not sell it in the US too?

Yes GSM is not widespread here, but why not sell it here as well as elsewhere? Not doing anything for their market share in their largest market.

Re: Why not sell it in the US too?

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Originally posted by slawyer
Not doing anything for their market share in their largest market.

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Re: Re: Why not sell it in the US too?

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Originally posted by nwhitfield

It might hurt american pride, but it's a fact of life; until your GSM market matures, you're not going to get most of the neat GSM gadgets first.

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Historically speaking, the GSM1800 networks have tended to be cheaper than the longer established GSM900 ones, certainly in the UK and a few other European countries that I know of.

BUT that's generally been the case when these extra networks started; over time competition (and regulation, which seems alien to some in the US) has evened things out quite a lot.

On the roaming front, you may or may not be losing out. It depends on the deals offered by your carrier, and if you don't have a choice of carrier, then yep, you might get a bum deal and not be able to select a cheaper network.

In Europe, however, more and more carriers are moving to simpler pricing, because the choice of GSM can be confusing. If I'm in the Netherlands, I'd have a choice of five networks to select from when I landed at Schipol, and lots of punters won't want to worry about what to choose. So my home network (which is also one of the cheapest for roaming) now does a flat rate system - any network, in any country in the Western Europe zone, will cost me the same to use. Same for US, Asia, Australia and so on. So if I had a single band 1800 phone, or used VisorPhone abroad and so could only pick a 900MHz network, it wouldn't matter.

Of course, that's happened because of the number of GSM networks and competition between them, which is a result of enforced standardisation leading to a mature market.

The US has gone for the opposite approach, leaving things to the market (someone will probably come along and tell me Europe is communist or something daft in a moment...). And leaving it to the market hasn't really worked in wireless for you; you might find a couple of networks in each area, but with wildly differing technologies, people have to swap phones to move.

Why GSM 1900 is used in the US instead of 1800 I don't know; perhaps someone can give a convincing technical or licensing reason. A fair number of people I've chatted with seem to hold the opinion that it's a case of "NIH" or "Not Invented Here" syndrome, but that's just cynical ;-)

Whether GSM will mature (or wireless at all) in the US, I don't know; you're certainly a long way off the penetration in Europe. I know more of your carriers are promising GSM, but I imagine it'll be a while yet before most people have a choice of four carriers, which is pretty common in most of Europe.

Nigel.

Nigel, you are my wireless network hero. VC ought to have you write a front page editiorial in defense of GSM.

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quote:

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Originally posted by dietrichbohn
Nigel, you are my wireless network hero.

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quote:

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Originally posted by nwhitfield


Swoon!

And you weren't even put off by my picture!

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quote:

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Originally posted by nwhitfield
Why GSM 1900 is used in the US instead of 1800 I don't know; perhaps someone can give a convincing technical or licensing reason. A fair number of people I've chatted with seem to hold the opinion that it's a case of "NIH" or "Not Invented Here" syndrome, but that's just cynical ;-)

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quote:

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Originally posted by nwhitfield
[...] The US has gone for the opposite approach, leaving things to the market (someone will probably come along and tell me Europe is communist or something daft in a moment...). And leaving it to the market hasn't really worked in wireless for you; you might find a couple of networks in each area, but with wildly differing technologies, people have to swap phones to move.

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quote:

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Why GSM 1900 is used in the US instead of 1800 I don't know; perhaps someone can give a convincing technical or licensing reason. A fair number of people I've chatted with seem to hold the opinion that it's a case of "NIH" or "Not Invented Here" syndrome, but that's just cynical ;-)

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quote:

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Whether GSM will mature (or wireless at all) in the US, I don't know; you're certainly a long way off the penetration in Europe. I know more of your carriers are promising GSM, but I imagine it'll be a while yet before most people have a choice of four carriers, which is pretty common in most of Europe.

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Originally posted by hxh167
Just like why they chose 2.45GHz for microwave heating, there is no technical reason at all. A lot of times, you will be suprised by how they decided technical issues by non-technical reasons. The more rediculous the reason is, the more likely it is true.

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Originally posted by Toby
What's that line from the Hertz commercial? "Not exactly." The US has done anything _but_ leave it to the market (if they had let market forces decide, we'd probably be on the same spectrums).

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edit:Excellent...I found the link I'd been looking for that explains the different evolutions. As you can see, the environments were totally different. In Europe, there were multiple analog standards which created problems, so they tried to unify them when they went digital. OTOH, the US was a monolithic analog standard, and when they went digital, the FCC was trying to _encourage_ different standards and competition.

http://www.gsmdata.com/es53060/history.htm

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Originally posted by nwhitfield
It's not so much the spectrum I'm thinking about here, but the number of different standards.

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quote:

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How did that come about if not by letting the companies decide for themselves what sort of network to build?

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quote:

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To the best of my knowledge, we've been fairly strict this side of the point, in terms of what people have been allowed to do when building networks, and that's ensured they're all compatible with each other.

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