My prediction is that Earthlink etc. will turn off the spigot within 2 or 3 quarters... then Helio will announce another round of investment by some 3rd party that is barely into mobile or even a VC firm.
Then it will get even worse as Apple will have a cheaper iphone out soon after that (summer '08) and or a iphone with just the ipod/phone/ and texting.. (for 249$?)
I see their content licensing deals drying up, and possibly less than desireable rates being given to existing customers as their contracts run out, and new customers getting the "good" rates unde the heading "cost of acquisition". If see the "churn" at Helio becoming utterly untenable as their customers are "poached" by offerings from Verizon, their data partner (with newer, focused, more feature packed phones on the same network). As it stands, existing Helio service members appear to have to pay $415 for the device, while its new activations that pay $295.
I think it was a nice idea. Yeah, you hear "post mortem" in my "voice". I don't think Helio has much of a future. If they were truly innovative, maybe... but its the same old phone... just with "more". If this strategy had them on some clear path towards profitability, and the buzz was glorious... that'd be hopeful... but the buzz is just SO MUTED.
Here's something interesting... Digg article:
http://digg.com/hardware/Unboxing_of_the_Helio_Ocean
In the comments at the bottom, two interesting ones:
DO NOT GET A HELIO!! THEY ARE PIRATES!!!! They're "Guarantee" is completely bollocks! I 10000% guarantee that if you aren't quite satisfied with their phone/service you will get absolutely NOTHING back, you will get an endless array of "customer service" sidesquidges, back-bumpers and all-around please-call-back-again-so-we-can-again-tell-you -to-sod-off routine! They'll gladly receive your returned phone (they acknowledge that proudly) and will promptly NEVER give you a refund for said instrument and or attached services of any kind whatsoever.[--SNIP--]
[--SNIP--]I ordered Helio's Ocean and have been using it for about 4 days now and I gotta tell you, its a good phone but there are issues. Hopefully they can tweak the software and fine tune the users experience. The phone has a simple interface UNTILL you use the web browser. It is beyond confusing as to how to get to some of their touted features. The browser needs better forward and back page buttons. It has a back button but needs a forward. The video stream link section forces you to scroll through pages of video clips you are not even interested in just to get to the ones you want. It would be nice if they grouped the videos by show names first and then list each episode. The main web page isn't customizable so you cant just quick pick the sites you use daily. You are forced to save them through a bookmark listing in a menu. Very annoying considering how much clicking it takes to navigate web pages.[--SNIP--]
I Googled "helio ocean refunds", and the Digg article came up first, then this one:
http://www.slashgear.com/helio-ocean-264476.php
In the comments area:
1) The Helio Ocean goes black at random times and just shuts down. This happened to mine the second day I had it. I called them and this is a known problem, even though they dont tell people.
2) I tried to return it, but their customer service is complete crap. They refuse to take my belt pouch back and give me a refund for it. They want to charge me for the minutes I used on the phone during the two days before I found out that their phone is a piece of crap oh yea, thats right, dont call it a phone, call it a piece of crap.
LOL I just got the Ocean about two weeks ago and it is perfect! The only problem is that it wont download free videos. I am guessing this is for legal reasons, since I have not seen this phone having problems downloading even relatively large files (lets say 4000 KB), such as a Youtube video from their Video Viral service or from the Helio Store. Does anyone know for sure why this is?
There are some other more positive comments in there too, and one by user "Tiger168", who has some interesting comments about the iPhone and the politics of where all of this is headed. Also, I liked this comment about Helio's "target market"
:
Nadia, Helio isnt going after the GSM market. I agree with Dustin, the Ocean is marketed towards rich kids with more money than god. If youre going to complain about about the Ocean not working outside of the US, you can pretty much bitch about all the handsets offered by Sprint and Verizon.
I checked out one more review before calling it quits. This one, by Yahoo:
http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/patterson/1442
I jumped to the web browser section, and caught this chilling comment:
"Also, the browser struggled to render full HTML pages correctly; it couldn't display the Yahoo! front page at all, and the IMDB front page looked jumbled (Nokia's Web browser breezed through those tests). Still, I'll take the Ocean's browser over almost any other mobile browser out there, including the Sidekick's."
It "struggles" to render HTML??? And that's a *winning* browser?
Yikes. Why is this acceptable...? --then the reviewer says
"I'll take the Ocean's browser over almost any other mobile browser out there"! Did they change reviewers in mid-paragraph or something? I just jumped to Yahoo on my iPhone and I lost 3 minutes becoming engrossed in the content, forgetting I was testing anything. To be fair... this review was in May, so I checked to see if the same reviewer "Ben Patterson", also tried the iPhone browser. Ah... I see it. His
unequivocal statement...
"the mobile Safari Web browser puts every other phone browser (including even Nokia's) to shame" in an article titled,
"Apple iPhone: Why I Bought One". It sounds as if he's straddling an iPhone and a Treo at the same time, too. Interesting.
~ CB
