http://peter.upfold.org.uk/blog/2008/06/09/very-brief-wwdc-thoughts/ My personal site and blog Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:25:37 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 http://peter.upfold.org.uk/blog/2008/06/09/very-brief-wwdc-thoughts/#comment-76074 Huw Leslie Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:51:35 +0000 http://peter.upfold.org.uk/blog/?p=491#comment-76074 Apple's such a powerful brand, so different rules might apply, but I am sceptical about the $99 price for the Mobile Me. Users don't now expect to pay for email/calendar and we're getting very close to an effective file storage solution for free as well. The premium models of Yahoo and Microsoft's webmail products have, I suspect, broken down in popularity, and even those few services for which users are prepared to pay offer a comprehensive free option as well (cf Flickr). Nevertheless, Apple's brand may just be enough to get lemmings to sign up anyway, and they don't need to get a very big fraction of Gmail's user numbers to be pulling in vast revenue with $99/year. And it helps that the demo looked like a compelling product. Apple’s such a powerful brand, so different rules might apply, but I am sceptical about the $99 price for the Mobile Me. Users don’t now expect to pay for email/calendar and we’re getting very close to an effective file storage solution for free as well. The premium models of Yahoo and Microsoft’s webmail products have, I suspect, broken down in popularity, and even those few services for which users are prepared to pay offer a comprehensive free option as well (cf Flickr). Nevertheless, Apple’s brand may just be enough to get lemmings to sign up anyway, and they don’t need to get a very big fraction of Gmail’s user numbers to be pulling in vast revenue with $99/year. And it helps that the demo looked like a compelling product.

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