Backup Anytime

There have been a number of tacky products about for a while which allow users to backup up their phone. The most common is USB (Yuk) which involves many manual processes. (even if you then sent it to online backup)

More recently however we have had online phone backup enter the market with third party companies programming symbian. There would appear to be significant complications with this at present. It is a better method and when it matures it should be the standard way to backup phones.

Add to the above the possibilities if mobile phone companies entered the online phone market (just a matter of time) in a real sense. What could they do differently?  Well in a addition to the obvious of a central billing point, they could run continuous backup of your phone and make the data available anywhere and anytime. Nice. It’s coming soon, real soon and you want it. If you don’t want you need it.

And now off the track for some iPhone indulgence.

Let’s face it, we all want an iPhone. Not because of technology. Certainly not because of price. It is just so well designed. Many of us will wait for value. Some just can’t. I checked the Irish market (in passing) recently. O2 appear to have that market sown up so I decided not to surrender to them ’till they have taken their premium from the rich and actually decide to sell the iPhone in serious volume. After that I couldn’t help seeing iPhone info everywhere.

I noted that Vodafone have iPhone monthly plans at Euro 29.90 in Portugal and the same company Vodafone, using the same phone, iPhone have plans at Euros 59 in Italy.

There are only two possibilities here.

The first is that the two entry level packs offer the exact same deal. If this is the case, surely it is a very obvious example of price discrimination. Is it allowed?

The second is that the deals are different. If this is the case, Vodafone have forgotten that both countries are not just in the same region but in the Euro zone which is a market and more specifically a common market. On what basis can they decide the Italians need more talk time or that talk should be cheap in Portugal.

If only O2 hadn’t got the iPhone all sown up here, we would see what Vodafone think of the Irish. Maybe we are better off not knowing.