Monday, November 1, 2004
Mobile Device Enthusiasts and OEMs: Not Always a Rosy Relationship
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 01:41 PM
"I think I get this thought at least once a month but as thoughts come - they also go but this time I want to write about it (maybe because the weather is so lousy today that I don't want to do anything else). This week, I had a couple of phone calls, SMS messages and instant messages with my fellow MVP Joe of mobilejoe.de. If you are not German-speaking but a Smartphone enthusiast you know - I'm sure - Paul's MoDaCo. Joe's mobilejoe.de is the same but in German; it's the Smartphone forum here and if you have visited it lately you might have seen the following message there: "Traffic Limit Reached" and now you even get a DNS error!"
Arne Hess has posted an interesting article on his site, and it's one that I can emphasize with. Give it a read - it might be an eye opener for some of you. It's amazing that a company like T-Mobile would refer customs to an enthusiast's site without bothering to contact that enthusiast and say "Hey, we're sending our customers you way, perhaps we can support the work you do?".
As much as I love writing about mobile devices day in and day out, it's amazing how difficult it is to get the cooperation of these companies to help support the work I do. Some companies are great at providing hardware so I don't have to pay out of pocket to review devices (Dell), while other companies tend to ignore people like me (Toshiba). Trying to get financial support from them through advertising and sponsorship is almost impossible - their advertising people don't even look twice at independent Web sites, but they'll happily drop $10K on a full-page magazine ad, even if that ad reaches less of an audience than a Web site does. Enough ranting from me :lol:, but this article reminded me of how frustrating this business can be. :?
Arne Hess has posted an interesting article on his site, and it's one that I can emphasize with. Give it a read - it might be an eye opener for some of you. It's amazing that a company like T-Mobile would refer customs to an enthusiast's site without bothering to contact that enthusiast and say "Hey, we're sending our customers you way, perhaps we can support the work you do?".
As much as I love writing about mobile devices day in and day out, it's amazing how difficult it is to get the cooperation of these companies to help support the work I do. Some companies are great at providing hardware so I don't have to pay out of pocket to review devices (Dell), while other companies tend to ignore people like me (Toshiba). Trying to get financial support from them through advertising and sponsorship is almost impossible - their advertising people don't even look twice at independent Web sites, but they'll happily drop $10K on a full-page magazine ad, even if that ad reaches less of an audience than a Web site does. Enough ranting from me :lol:, but this article reminded me of how frustrating this business can be. :?
