Thanks so much for the constructive criticism, please keep it coming. I'll take your points one at a time.

Getting the software on handsets: This is really just a marketing/money problem. In the early days of the Internet, companies like Amazon would practically give away product to gain customers -- we believe the same thing is about to happen in the mobile world. Customers will load our software, or software like it, because doing so will give them great prices on things they already want to buy. We get them interested with great prices. We educate them to expect to get a discount.

Vendor confidence/uptake Vendor uptake is easy -- they're either plugged into this kind of marketing or they're not. The early adopters will be, and we have to bag some of them. Those early wins will help convince the later adopters of the business model and of our ability to deliver.

Convincing customers to opt in Consumers will do crazy things for a bargain. In the US, we just experienced Black Thursday -- the day after Thanksgiving. Some people were in line for two days to get pole position in line. People who are willing to do that will be willing to put software on their cell phone that will alert them to great deals -- it's really a matter of education.

Google has simply shot the first salvo in the war to break up the "walled garden". You can already see companies positioning themselves for the change -- verizon just the other day announced that they will open their network to all players. 2007-2008 is going to be a lot like the early days of the Internet. Only now, we have 3B handsets that people have with them 24/7 instead of 1B computers that people can't carry around. Handsets change over quickly so adoption will be fast.

As for Google moving into this space -- that would present a challange, but it would also spell a tremendous opportunity because it would validate the concept in a big way. Once google announces something like this, their competitors will look around to find someone who has something similar cooking -- that will be us!

All of this is only important after June or so -- until then, we simply have to win a spot in the Android Challange.

Thanks and keep 'em coming!

On Nov 29, 4:40 am, gpsmobiler <gpsm...@gmail.com> wrote: