At our Wireless and Mobile Device Roundtable Ross Rubin and Craig Mathias discussed the capacity issue of 3G for the next few years. Continued technology improvements will allow some capacity growth but tiered and priority pricing seem inevitable. Over the next 3-5 years unlimited data plans will be replaced with offloading and other incentive pricing tools by all the players. Microsoft's recent decisions with Nokia and Skype were questioned in detail and when pushed Ross Rubin of NPD gave Microsoft technology a three year window to work with Nokia before significant risk to both companies. It was felt Nokia took a bigger risk not looking at Android as an option and that may come back to haunt them while for Microsoft the partnership seems to have less risk.
Ross Rubin is Director of Industry Analysis for The NPD Group while Craig Mathias is Principal at the Farpoint Group.
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