Why no Video Recorder ?

[firewood]

Actually, MMS doesn't even cost the cell companies a dime.

The marginal cost may be zero. But the phone company needs to charge a high enough price to ration the channel usage so that, on average, the system doesn't become overloaded.

So when SMS/MMS popularity gets high enough that they might have to build more cell towers and more network infrastructure, etc., just to handle the load for SMS/MMS, which could cost billions, they just raise the per message price until people complain instead of overloading the system.

Simple micro-economics.

 

[briand05]

My guess is you'll see the "best cell phone video recorder ever" touted as a "revolutionary" feature in some future version of the iPhone as if no cell phone ever took video before. I really think they're holding out on a lot of these small things because they know their customers will buy it even without all these basic features, then when they add some of these ever so basic features to some future iPhone these same people will fork over the cash for a brand new iPhone. I remember Apple held out on including CD burners in Macs for so long after nearly every other computer on the market did CD burning, then when they finally added CD burning to Macs, they hyped it like Macs were the very first computers to ever do CD burning.

 

[Vegastouch]

My guess is you'll see the "best cell phone video recorder ever" touted as a "revolutionary" feature in some future version of the iPhone as if no cell phone ever took video before. I really think they're holding out on a lot of these small things because they know their customers will buy it even without all these basic features, then when they add some of these ever so basic features to some future iPhone these same people will fork over the cash for a brand new iPhone. I remember Apple held out on including CD burners in Macs for so long after nearly every other computer on the market did CD burning, then when they finally added CD burning to Macs, they hyped it like Macs were the very first computers to ever do CD burning.

But it didnt make them the best. Keep dreaming on them putting out the best phone camera ever.

 

[briand05]

But it didnt make them the best. Keep dreaming on them putting out the best phone camera ever.

Didn't mean that I think it would be the best ever, I meant that if they do eventually add Video Recording they will hype it as the best.

 

[dacreativeguy]

My guess is you'll see the "best cell phone video recorder ever" touted as a "revolutionary" feature in some future version of the iPhone as if no cell phone ever took video before.

When you have the hottest phone on the market there is no need to throw in the kitchen sink. Even though the AT&T contracts are for 2 years, Apple really wants you to upgrade EVERY year. Spreading some key features across a few releases increases the chance that you'll upgrade.

Look at the sad history of Palm. The original Palm Pilot did everything and over the next 6 years or so, the upgrades were extremely evolutionary. Before the Treo arrived, there wasn't much reason to ever upgrade to a new device.

Apple obviously doesn't want to repeat that history.