Wouldn't it be nice to have something like google-sms in Hong Kong, or even Asia?
I figured it entirely possible to pull it off on my own with enough bluetooth phones, a couple of Mac Mini with bluetooth adaptor, some programming and a lot of fine-tuning.
Google-sms is a fantastic extension of their search service. It provides information that can be very useful for those on the move. Cell phone searches, however, requires insane amount of localization. Movie times, restaurat locations, weather, business listing, all of these have to be relevant to the phone holder's location or it would be pointless.
So, SMS Hong Kong would work by someone sending a SMS to a specific number. The phone that's tied to that number would tell tell the mac via bluetooth that there's a message. Program on the mac would pharse the message, get whatever information it needs from the web, construct a valid SMS package and send it to the same number via bluetooth over the same phone. I would have to have at least one phone for each network provider because in-network SMS is free (as in beer).
There are a couple of problems I see right off with this way of implementation:
1. bandwidth: 720kbps, and you're really not supposed to be using every single last drop of it. This coupled with the bandwith of the phone-network itself, is going to be a huge issue once the traffic goes up. In other words, this solution is absolutely not scalable.
2. Business Model - I have yet to see a viable way to make a few bucks here and there with this service. You can't advertise on SMS, so the only one you can charge is the mobile users who wants these information via SMS. You can't charge them anything more than a few dollars in Hong Kong. Insane competition in the mobile market, and the people are so spoiled by cheap minutes that anything more than a couple of dollars a month and they'll walk away.
3. Competition - What's to stop any single one or all of the network provider jumping in and providing the same features, in the package? They have the infrastructure. The only reason they haven't done it is because they don't think it's a good market, that or they're lazy.
Anyways, I think I'm going to take the advice of smallbizpod, do it and ask questions later, much later.
wait, too late, didn't I already asked the questions?
cheers
I figured it entirely possible to pull it off on my own with enough bluetooth phones, a couple of Mac Mini with bluetooth adaptor, some programming and a lot of fine-tuning.
Google-sms is a fantastic extension of their search service. It provides information that can be very useful for those on the move. Cell phone searches, however, requires insane amount of localization. Movie times, restaurat locations, weather, business listing, all of these have to be relevant to the phone holder's location or it would be pointless.
So, SMS Hong Kong would work by someone sending a SMS to a specific number. The phone that's tied to that number would tell tell the mac via bluetooth that there's a message. Program on the mac would pharse the message, get whatever information it needs from the web, construct a valid SMS package and send it to the same number via bluetooth over the same phone. I would have to have at least one phone for each network provider because in-network SMS is free (as in beer).
There are a couple of problems I see right off with this way of implementation:
1. bandwidth: 720kbps, and you're really not supposed to be using every single last drop of it. This coupled with the bandwith of the phone-network itself, is going to be a huge issue once the traffic goes up. In other words, this solution is absolutely not scalable.
2. Business Model - I have yet to see a viable way to make a few bucks here and there with this service. You can't advertise on SMS, so the only one you can charge is the mobile users who wants these information via SMS. You can't charge them anything more than a few dollars in Hong Kong. Insane competition in the mobile market, and the people are so spoiled by cheap minutes that anything more than a couple of dollars a month and they'll walk away.
3. Competition - What's to stop any single one or all of the network provider jumping in and providing the same features, in the package? They have the infrastructure. The only reason they haven't done it is because they don't think it's a good market, that or they're lazy.
Anyways, I think I'm going to take the advice of smallbizpod, do it and ask questions later, much later.
wait, too late, didn't I already asked the questions?
cheers
No comments:
Post a Comment