It appears to me that the real killing is going to be made, not by the
company that finds a way to sell $500 terminals, but that is capable of
renting "Internet Machines" to the masses for $20 per month. Until recently
(at least in Canada) most people rented their telephones from Bell.
Initially this was because the cost of purchasing the phones exceeded the
resources of much of the population. More recently, it was a way for Bell
Canada to increase cash flow.
At the moment, PCs are too expensive for a fairly large percentage of the
population--renting them specially designed and extraordinarily
user-friendly "internet machines" makes sense. The key, however, is that
the profits need not come directly from rental of the units--the profits
derive from the sale of advertisements that appear each time the machine is
activated (or that appear on the units "hard wired" home page).
It strikes me that someone is going to make a fortune following this model.
Unfortunately, it isn't going to be me.
Randy Woods
----
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Marketing to Women Online Conference &lt;<a href="<a href="http://www.kelseygroup.com/kelsey">http://www.kelseygroup.com/kelsey</a>">http://www.kelseygroup.com/kelsey</a>&gt;
Talk with Dave Taylor, Tuesday, Oct. 17, at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern
over the Internet using GlobalStage/GlobalChat software. See
&lt;<a href="<a href="http://www.popco.com/hyper/internet-marketing/chat.html">http://www.popco.com/hyper/internet-marketing/chat.html</a>">http://www.popco.com/hyper/internet-marketing/chat.html</a>&gt; for details
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