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"Disposable" Cell Phone Actually Repackaged Nokia 158

Posted by Hemos from the reduce-reuse-repackage dept.
ewhac writes "Hop-On.com apparently started distributing the first versions of their disposable/recyclable cell phones, which will offer 60 minutes for $30. Hop-On claims their proprietary technology makes this possible. However, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that, upon cracking open the phones, they found not the kind of disposable cell phone technology covered earlier on Slashdot, but a jury-rigged Nokia. When confronted, Hop-On CEO Peter Michaels dodged by saying the phones the Chronicle took apart were, "promotional samples only. They are not Hop-On production phones." The article also calls into serious question Hop-On's other claims, and also points out California revoked Hop-On's corporate status last month."
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"Disposable" Cell Phone Actually Repackaged Nokia More

"Disposable" Cell Phone Actually Repackaged Nokia

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  • Not much a suprise (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Liquidape ( 260782 )
    The article claimed they had raised 5 million in financing. How the hell do you plan on building a new cel phone design with that minimal amount of money. Just the injection molding tools and the assembly/pakcaging equipment required to make it at $30 would cost more than that.

    • Re:Not much a suprise (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 )
      Where have you been?

      Acquire an existing analog design (nobody said these had to be the latest PCS or anything)

      Have chinese company make a pile of knockoffs.

      About 10 years ago PBS has a great series called the 'mini dragons' and part of the feature was just how small a company could be to produce something like this. I'm certain they could have a few thousand units produced within that ballpark if they wanted to. My guess is they guy had what seemed like a pretty good idea, but just doesn't have the right ducks in a row. He sounds more snake-oil than genius.

    • Re:Not much a suprise (Score:2, Interesting)

      by thogard ( 43403 )
      The plastic tooling will cost about $20k. 5 years ago all phones left the ericson factory in lynchburg VA for under $100 per unit. Since then every fab in China can build it much cheaper. Drop the chip direct on the circut board and you cut out 50% of the costs (like casio learned how many decades ago?)

      since the major markup is still on the teleco charges, it can be done under $30 and it could be done for less with enough upfront R&D.

      Remember silcon is sold by the acre--complexity is irrelevant with large numbers.
  • Actually, this one sounded too stupid to be true, which in the normal realm of things, usually makes it true, unfortunately.

    Can't say here nor there on it, as $30 a pop for a disposable cellphone with 60 minutes seemed ludicrous to begin with. Even if it could be done, I'd expect the big cellular providers to be there by now.

    • Chum, this is America. The reason you think it is too cheap to be real, is that you are used to being overcharged.

      The US cell phone providers are raking in hand over fist. It's still an immature market, and they lag several years behind in technology. They are behaving exactly the same way as the major long distance providers, trying to achieve monopoly using any trick in the book. Funny thing, they ARE the same companies. I tell ya, if Sprint or ATT tried to sell their service plans in any European country, without dropping prices 50% or more, they'd be laughed out of town.
      • I must be missing something. I fail to see how paying $30 for 60 minutes of mobile phone time is at all too cheap or too good to be true... Any provider has rates far better that $2/minute, and the savings would exceed the cost of the phone itself after just a couple of months.

        Or is this not disposible in the sense that a disposible camera is, i.e. use it up then throw it out? (I didn't realize there *was* another sense of the word...)

    • My wife and I have ditched our previous cell phones for Tracfones [tracfone.com]. This year, I've spent ~$200 for 400 minutes of airtime - around $0.50/min (my usage pattern with my cell phone makes that a better deal than paying $420/year for unlimited minutes). So in that respect, it's comparable to the Hop-On.

      On the other hand, unlike the Hop-On, my Tracfone is a real, honest-to-goodness, rechargeable Nokia (and a fairly nice one at that.) So you have to wonder at the Hop-On buisness model... provide less value than an established competitor, for the same price? I thought the dot-com era demonstrated exactly where this type of thinking would take you.

  • Ummm... so? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Knunov ( 158076 )
    "...upon cracking open the phones, they found not [a] disposable cell phone..., but a jury-rigged Nokia."

    Isn't this a good thing? The worst hit from this will be taken by Nokia, because now consumers will wonder why they are being charged $150+ for the innards of a phone that goes for $30.

    This should be pure joy for gizmo hackers.

    Knunov
    • and not to mention the fact that they must be buying their phones or getting their phones from Nokia in some way, so that means Nokia must be at least getting some profit or money out of this in some way so I dont see how this hurts Nokia in some way, except the fact that they're selling it cheaper than Nokia is..

      • The Nokia innards ones are apparently just the evaluation ones.

        However, if they did use Nokia innards in the final product, and the product was faulty, Nokia would get a bad name.

      • Re:Ummm... so? (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Err... yeah, they bought 100 phones for $250 and ripped them apart for their own product, there's no way you'll see this on the market for $30, it's just a scam to fool investors.

        Nokia is making a profit out of this, they got the $250 market price, now try and workout how a company can buy something for $250 and sell it for $30, read about the whole little dotcom thing and decide for yourself.

        Scam? most certainly!

    • Re:Ummm... so? (Score:4, Informative)

      by klieber ( 124032 ) on Saturday March 30, 2002 @09:44AM (#3253298) Homepage
      Let me guess. Didn't read the article? Thought so.
      • At least some of the phones were purchased from Cingular -- not Nokia.
      • There was no mention in the article that *any* phones were purchased straight from Nokia
      • There was no mention in the article that the innards of the phone go for $30.
      • The phones in question were distributed to media-types only to demonstrate the supposed proprietary technology. They were not purchased by end users.

      • Re:Ummm... so? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Saturday March 30, 2002 @02:53PM (#3254723)
        > The phones in question were distributed to media-types only to demonstrate the supposed proprietary technology. They were not purchased by end users.

        And when someone opened the phone to see what made it tick, they saw no evidence that a disposable phone tech existed, only what appeared to be a cleverly-rigged demo by a company with (as the article describes) a questionable history of legal/regulatory/disciplinary actions against it.

        I smell a letter to Fritz Hollings in the making:

        "Sir, I'm an ethikul bidnizzman now facing the possibility of fraud charges, SEC charges, and a class-action lawsuit from angry investors because someone had a jeweller's screwdriver and opened the demo unit to discover that my new proprietary tech was just a rigged demo with someone else's product in a cheap paper shell that relied on nobody in the press opening the demo units!

        We need a law requiring that all electronics be shipped with inbuilt rods of thermite hooked up to photocells, so that the products automatically self-immolate whenever opened by criminal hackers! (The current market-based solution of merely voiding the warranty is clearly an insufficient deterrent.)

        Similarly, a jeweller's screwdriver ought to be used by jewellers only. I propose a licencing requirement for screwdrivers under a certain diameter, to minimize the risk of screwdriver technology falling into the hands of those who would use them to open electronic devices. Screwdrivers are clearly a reverse-engineering enabling tool, and their use must be restricted.

        My business model requires new legislation mandating the tamperproofing with auto-destruct devices in all electronic components in the next session, along with compulsory licensing for reverse-engineering tools. As I'm sure you're well aware, the livelihood of the entire rigged demo industry depends on the suckers not realizing it's all smoke and mirrors until after we get financing.

        I propose this new law be called the Cellphone Bidnizzman Demonstration Technology Protection Act (CBDTPA), and claim it will encourage entreprenooers to produce longer and more breathless press releases, leading to higher stock prices for entreprenooers without the risk of having the schemes exposed by illegal criminal terrorist hackers armed with jewellers' screwdrivers.

        Enclosed, please find a big bag of money.

        Sincerely..."

      • Let me guess. Didn't read the article?

        Er, yeah, I did. That's why I submitted it.

        * At least some of the phones were purchased from Cingular -- not Nokia.

        Yeah, and...? Cingular doesn't make phones, they sell cellular service. The phones they offer are co-branded Motorolas, Ericssons, and Nokias.

        * There was no mention in the article that *any* phones were purchased straight from Nokia

        Yeah, and...? Is their attempt at deception somehow nullified simply because they obtained the Nokias through a third party?

        * The phones in question were distributed to media-types only to demonstrate the supposed proprietary technology. They were not purchased by end users.

        The phones were represented to the media as their actual product. When the reporters learned the truth and called them on it, Hop-On backpedaled and said it's only a mock-up.

        Sorry, Hop-On loses.

        Schwab

    • So if I coat a bar of gold bullion with plastic and sell it to you for $30 as part of some IPO scam, should bullion investors be upset because they're paying $1000's for what "goes" for $30?

      Were you born stupid, or dropped on your head?
    • Want to read the article again?

      It was just Nokia samples that Nokia gave (I don't think they gave it to them either), and Hop-On used it to install on the phones without any premission from Nokia..

      I smell a big law suit...
    • Well, because they're unlikely to actually make a $30 phone for one, and because it's almost certain that this is a pump and dump scheme to grab as much money as they can from stupid investors.
  • I don't mind if they're losing money on it.
    Where do I buy one for that thirty dollars?

  • Any sufficiently advanced technology... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30, 2002 @09:42AM (#3253278)
    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
    --G

  • $30 is quite expensive... (Score:4, Informative)

    by hexdcml ( 553714 ) <hexdcml AT hotmail DOT com> on Saturday March 30, 2002 @09:42AM (#3253283)
    I dunno what phones cost in the US, but still I would not pay $30 or £ equivlent for a disposble phone. You can quite easily pick up a pay-as-you go phone over hear for £29.99 (maybe about $40??) and for that price, you get a fully featured phone (last time i saw one, it was a Phillips Genie) Im still not sceptical about the whole voice recognition thing.. what if you're in a noisy / bad reception area? will it still be able to recognise then?
    • Those £29.99 are probably below cost. Your mobile phone company is betting on covering costs after you recharge it with money. That is why the phone and/or sim card is locked to that same provider. Unlock the phone and your mobile phone company is loosing money. Also, it is not unheard of in some countries for mobile phone companies to really rig the prices down in order to increase user base until certain goal is reached. It helps share prices in needy times for example.

      /Pedro
      • Uh.... so what? You *STILL* get your 30 minute free with the phone or whatnot, if you want to buy more, you buy more time..

        The point he is making is why go through $30 disposable phones when for a price in the same ballpark, you can get a fully featured phone?

        And you *can* get them unlocked you know.

        Also.. don't forget competition. Yes, companies will lock down prices to get more customers. Well guess whta? prices go up, a competitor is doing the same thing, and you switch. Switching is a pain? Try getting a new disposable phone every 30 minutes.
        • If you reread what i wrote, you may eventually notice that i was not countering anything the other poster said. I was just adding information to his post, lots of people do think mobile phones are cheap to make because of the cost of those prepaid and pay as you go packages. So chill out, man, this is not a combat simulation and not everybody is going against you in your side of the highway. ;-)

          /Pedro
    • For one who has one, the voice recognition is suprisingly good. It rarely, if ever makes mistakes. I use it all the time :)
  • 1. Company Announces Cool New Product.
    2. Press Releases tout new product, articles in respectable publications back the products. (I saw this in Time at one time)
    3. Time passes, money is spent (embezzled?) and the product never really surfaces.
    4. Eventually we find out it was a bunch of BS and the demoes we're fake.

    Where have we seen this before? ;)

    • In news releases and interviews, the publicly traded California company says it has developed and manufactured an "innovative, technologically advanced" phone so cheap that customers can toss it away when they are done. Hop-On says the phone will retail for $30, including 60 minutes of calls.

      But after cracking open several samples with Hop-On's name and kangaroo logo, The Chronicle found the "revolutionary" device appeared to be little more than a jury-rigged Nokia in a new plastic shell.

      Underneath the red plastic casing, one sample was clearly labeled inside as a "Nokia 8260."

      yep looks like it fits the pattern, I would say.

  • More pollution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yggdrazil ( 261592 ) on Saturday March 30, 2002 @09:45AM (#3253304)
    What's the point about disposable mobiles anyway? It's just more pollution. Less quality. It's just plain idiotic.

    There should be a big fee on disposable mobiles to cover the recycling costs of the stuff.

    Plus mobiles are terminals which do a lot more than voice telephony. This trend will only accellerate in the years to come.

    • Terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)

      by clark625 ( 308380 )

      Disposable phones are perfect for a terrorist, drug dealer, or other criminal. Simply go to Wal-Mart ot Target, pay cash for the phone and the minutes, and leave. Or have one of your "associates" do the purchase so that you're not on the store cameras. Currently, someone has to use a credit card and pay some money to sign of for service--that's not difficult to do but does present some barrier.

      I'm not trying to troll here--it's just that a disposable phone is ideal for someone trying to remain anonymous and under the radar of the authorities. That's a huge advantage.

      Myself, I have thought that I would like a mobile phone--but I'm not willing to pay upwards of $150 for a phone plus the monthly contract. And I'm all about pre-paying because I don't plan to use the phone much anyways. A disposable phone with 60 minutes would likely last me a year. At that point, I think I should be allowed to toss the thing since I know many people who get new phones every year at the $300 price tag. I doubt much of this will ever see the light of day, though, since the possibilities for criminals are huge.

      • Re:Terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MoNickels ( 1700 )
        Everything can, and is, used by criminals. Grocery carts, street signs, road maps, mailboxes, elevators, stairs, 411, electricity, tap water, pens, pencils, water colors, lawnmowers, yard rakes, credit cards, checks, cash, coins, incense, books, the Internet, public transportation, libraries, televisions, radios, walkie-talkies, handerkerchiefs, laundromats, diners, off-ramps, on-ramps, overpasses, optometrists, public education, gas stations, restaurants, liquor stores, scissors, glue and tape.

        You jackass.

        • Sure, criminals use everything most everyone else does. Apparently you missed the question of the original poster. What is the point of a disposable phone?

          I'm not saying that only criminals will use these phones. I'm saying that criminal will likely only use these phones instead of the more typical mobile phones. They are cheaper, allow for more anonymity at time of purchase, and you can change phones every day if desired. One could say simliar traits are seen in some bomb-making materials. Now, there are a lot of legitimate, legal, and harmless ways to use many bomb-making materials. But criminals tend to lock-on to something that's good for their trade, just like everyone else. It's more efficient that way. High crime isn't run much differently than a company--and more death/drugs/profit per dollar invested is the major desire.

          In my opinion, I feel that a disposable phone makes a criminal's life easier. And that's not something I have an issue with. But, here in the US at least, some people are really going to get unhappy when they find out that the next bin Laden (or whoever) attack is coordinated via disposable phones (instead of the regular ones that the 9/11 attacks were coordinated with).

          Hell, I'm not saying that disposable phones are going to cause terrorism or crime. I'm merely answering the question as to who would most benefit from these types of phones. Clearly, in my opinion, criminals have the most to gain from this. That's not going to stop me from buying one if "real" ones ever make it to market, though.

          • Another question to ask is - where are all the new numbers going to come from for these disposable mobiles? People are going to want to receive calls as well as send them.
            • That's interesting. I wonder if the phones will simply have a main number and assign extensions to each phone (POTS NAT - hehe). Really, i'm surprised why cell phone providers haven't done this yet. It could definitely cut down on the monthly costs of phones for people who really don't care about having their own number.

              Or, maybe these disposable phones simply won't handle incoming calls, only outgoing ones.
              It would be kind of silly for people to memorize a number to contact you when you plan on throwing it away...
          • I think we should get rid of cash, too. Law-abiding citizens can just use debit cards (and thier required national ID cards) to buy stuff. That will stop crime, for sure.

        • Criminals already use disposable phones, in the sense that they steal them from other people and then throw them away to avoid being traced. Not that I think the disposable phone is a particularly good idea, but it won't make "phone crime" any worse.
      • Another perfect market is the same market that burns money on Pre-paid as it is. Stupid Teenagers under 18(not necessarily all teenagers, just the dull ones). People who feel the need to be connected to their "friends" all the time.

        About the pollution, who's to say there won't be a place designated to dump the stupid things off so they could be re-used, like those disposable cameras get recycled when you develop the photos.

      • Disposable phones are perfect for a terrorist, drug dealer, or other criminal. Simply go to Wal-Mart ot Target, pay cash for the phone and the minutes, and leave. Or have one of your "associates" do the purchase so that you're not on the store cameras. Currently, someone has to use a credit card and pay some money to sign of for service--that's not difficult to do but does present some barrier.

        Bah. In this country, go to any 7-Eleven, gas-station, grocery store or whatever, and pick up a crap mobile with prepaid airtime for 50-100 euro. If you are asked to sign a contract, you probably won't be asked to show an id.

        If terrorists can hijack planes, if criminals can steal a car, they most certainly can get hold of a mobile phone.
      • Why not get yourself one of the many existing prepay mobile plans, like free up (or whatever it is) from Verizon or whatever att's plan is? It's more reliable, you can recharge the phone whenever you want, and its from a company thats been around for a long time, and probably isn't going anywhere for a long time either. Just by looking at hop-on's website, I get the immediate feeling that they are all talk, and their devices will never surface.

      • Re:Terrorism (Score:2, Insightful)

        by grimarr ( 223895 )
        A disposable phone with 60 minutes would likely last me a year.


        Not from all the companies I looked at last month. They put a time limit on the minutes -- if you don't use them in 60 days or so, they disappear. Be sure to check your contract carefully.


        I was interested in this sort of plan, but not any more.


        It's not enough that they hold on to your money (without paying interest) for a while before providing service -- after a while, they decide that they don't have to actually provide the service, or give your money back. No wonder they push it so hard!

      • The concept of buying a phone like you would buy groceries is nothing new outside the US.

        In many of the mobile-savvy areas - Europe, Asia, and Australia, you can walk in to a shop, pick up a pre-paid phone package (or just the SIM card - the part that identifies you) very cheaply, and you pay in cash. You get your own phone number and call/SMS/WAP credit. To get more credit, you just buy a "recharge card" in cash, the same way you bought the prepaid package.

        In Australia we do have legislation now that requires some form of photo-ID to be shown though, although it is far less secure than a credit-check. Perhaps if this takes off in the US, similar legislation will be brought in.

        --jquirke
    • Many of us have our cameras but we still buy the ocassional disposable camera.

      In the same way, when I forget my phone, the battery runs down or when roaming in area is prohibitively expensive (international?), then a disposable phone is perfect!
    • > What's the point about disposable mobiles anyway?

      I can think of at least one reason for disposable mobiles that will be valid at least until there is some kind of global network with reasonable charges for operating out of your area. I went to the UK for a week recently and it would have been really convenient to have a mobile. I was visiting my girlfriend who is abroad for this year so has her own mobile, but if I was visiting on my own, say for a conference, or just for fun, it would've been very nice to have a mobile that worked in the UK for the week I was there.

      For example, RyanAir managed to lose our luggage for a few days, and I don't know how we would've given them contact information without having a mobile with us, or easily been able to call the airport to see if it had shown up. I think you could come up with many other examples of how cost-effective disposable mobiles would be convenient to travellers.

  • I know this companies a sham... (I acctually read the article) but I would still like them to work every thing out and produce this phone. I wouldn't actually use it but I would love to take it apart and play with its insides. I can see a real cuecat/audry/iopener hacker community building up around this.

  • even if this is true, sound a bit weird (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fiddlesticks ( 457600 ) on Saturday March 30, 2002 @09:58AM (#3253344) Homepage
    from hop-on [hop-on.com]
    It features simple two-button (CALL / END) operation and employs the very latest automated voice-recognition technology, making number entry both easy and mistake proof.
    This sounds like Jakob Nielsen's dream...and could turn out to be his nightmare.

    I dount very much that this has 'mistake proof.' VR - has it been invented yet? Is it ever possible? Certainly not in a 30USD phone, and especially not given the non-dictionary words this address book will need to have in it - peoples' names and nicks, and business names.

    Mobile/ cell Phones - however cheap they are - are always treated as mission critical appliances wby their owners. Owners will NOT appreciate having to f*** around trying to get the correct number to dial 'cos there's no other UI alternative.

    example (and probably what hopon are basing their tech on - if it does exist, but that's another matter)

    I have one of these nokias details here [nokiausa.com] with VR for top ten numbers of your choice, and I never use it. Try standing on a noisy street shouting 'Mum, Mum' into the phone and it keeps dialling 'Mee Mee' - your local food delivery place, and you'll see what I mean.

    Don't make all tech too simple! How can you 'EZ-Interface' an SMS/ Text msg UI?

    That's if it isn't all vapour ware.
    • I dount very much that this has 'mistake proof.' VR - has it been invented yet? Is it ever possible? Certainly not in a 30USD phone, and especially not given the non-dictionary words this address book will need to have in it - peoples' names and nicks, and business names.

      If Hop-on is inteligent this is not that big of a problem. The simple way to do voice-rec on under-powered devices is to use a remote system. So you press the call button, and then it dials a hardwired number, which then prompts for you to say your number(names would be complicated) and the server then recognizes it, confirms it, and connects you to the number, all of which takes up your call time. In other words this basically uses the phone as a dumb terminal only sending along data(voice) to a central server.

      • "Zero", "One", "Two", "Three" sounds like dictionary words to me. The instructions aren't to say the name of the personal or organization to call, but to say the number, which is then verified back to the user. It only has to recognize 10 words, maybe eleven if they allow "Oh" as well as "Zero".
      • thats fine - but how do you prog the numbers into the remote system?

        and does that take up minutes.

        how lame is that - spen $30 on a buttonless phone with 60 minutes. Spend 45 minutes calling the "operator" to get the numbers you want to dial in the system.

        try to call said prog'd num and get cutoff because you wasted all your time with "if this is correct, say YES"

        what would be a better service for hopon or any other buttonless / VR phone system would be to start a portal - with web based email. And have the address book on that system be the dial directory for the phone services. However - until there is flawlerss VR then I think that buttonless phone systems will not be a very practical solution...

        unless it just connected you with a human dialer on the other end - but then you get into the cost issues..
  • I remember this being the "next big thing" about a couple of years ago, what happened? These guys couldn't swing the licensing?
  • A company comes out of no where, promising new technology at a supposedly obsene price.

    After the people 'in the know' say, "we don't trust you, you smell like snake oil," the san fran chronicle says
    "hey, their phones aren't what they said they were!"

    so their CEO comes back with a "uh, um ....uh, yeah, those were promo phones, yeah, that's the ticket!" seems that if your were marketing a disposable phone, you'd at least USE YOUR PHONE FOR THE PROMO! BAD BUSINESS, NO COOKIE!

    ...and I quoteth from business 101 [slashdot.org]

    "5. Proving the old business-school saw that "any idiot can sell a dollar for 80 cents," online-currency company Flooz.com in July launches a special offer whereby American Express platinum cardholders can buy $1,000 of Flooz currency for just $800.
    6. A month later, Flooz.com ceases processing transactions. It declares bankruptcy in November, leaving those who bought Flooz currency stuck with worthless e-dollars. "

    See what happens when you overreach your abilities? someone needs to tell these businesses to make sure the stuff is feasable before they make promises.

    I forsee a very similar future unless they get their act together...

    • At least what flooz was doing had some validity -- they *had* to build up their user base to become a usable currency. If they had pulled it off, then they start charging transaction fees. They were a long shot, but it also could have made them wildly wealthy.

      This phone thing is just stupid.
    • > See what happens when you overreach your abilities?

      Yeah, you get a bunch of vc money, use it to pay yourself and some friends from business school (being CEO, CTO, etc.) 7-figure salaries (or at least mid 6-figures) for a couple years, and then go "bankrupt". That is, the company goes bankrupt, not the execs. The execs leave with millions. Exactly as planned. Not much of a growth plan, but these kinds of companies aren't really in it for the growth.

      Do you think Robert Levitan, CEO of Flooz is poor these days?

      _-_-_
  • Candid Camera recently did a skit where they did the "disposable phone"... it was a regular phone that they claimed you got 10 2-minute phone calls on, and could receive incoming calls, for $15. Out of the 5-10 people that looked at it, only one person was actually stupid enough to go for it. Snake oil, I tell you. Who would really want one of these?
  • where the two phones i traded in at the Cingular [cingular.com] store yesterday are going.

    I wonder if this was the charity that they were referring to when telling me where my two old Nokii [nokiausa.com] were going. Of course, they did say something about battered women...maybe they misunderstood what was meant by "Hop On" [hop-on.com]... oh well...

  • True business accumen... (Score:5, Funny)

    by FyRE666 ( 263011 ) on Saturday March 30, 2002 @10:33AM (#3253465) Homepage
    Step 1. Sell $250 phones for $30.
    Step 2.
    Step 3. Profit!
  • steps: 1. create a demo product/services without really making one. it will then inflates your stocks and you can get financing from investors too! 2. sell your stocks, be a millionaire and let thm in a loop when your product/services will come out. 3. repeat!
  • As some other posters have pointed out, here in the UK you can get a pay-as-you-go phone for about $40, and you have the advantage your numbers are stored in the phone! With this Hop On thing, you have to keep a list of numbers somewhere. And does it receive calls?

    HOWEVER...

    Where it has excellent potential is for emergencies. Even if you own a regular phone, with the CALL button rigged to call 911 (or 999 here in the UK):

    a) Ladies, in your handbag or purse in case of attack. Just press the PANIC button.
    b) In the car glove box in case you crash or witness an accident but your regular phone is unavailable, missing, lost, disconnected etc.
    c) In the home (in case fire or burglers cut off the land line)
    d) Very young kids who would not be able to dial a regular number. Press the MOM / DAD button to call for help.

    A built in GPS chip would be useful to provide location details in case caller did not know where he or she was or was injured. Until then, triangulation would have to do.

    Are you listening Hop On? This is called a VERTICAL MARKET application, and it's probably HUGE. I would buy one for my car glove box and stamp EMERGENCY on the front in big red letters.

    Your thoughts fellow Slashdotters?

    • I don't see the point, when any "deactivated" cellphone can still be used (and is legally required to) be able to call 911 on the networks they can access.
      • I don't see the point, when any "deactivated" cellphone can still be used (and is legally required to) be able to call 911 on the networks they can access.

        Does not the GSM spec say that 112 is the emergency number. (the carrier HAS to fwd/make that number call the local emergency line 911 US, 999 UK, 000 here in AU). My nokia will even attempt to call the number if you press 112 regardless if it has keypad lock turned on. Try it, you may be surprised. (Ensure that a call goes not go through tho, you dont want to waste emergency services time!)
    • as the other poster here pointed out , all cellphones, deactivated,new,never activated,stolen... all can dial 911 here in the states and connect.
      There are several products on the market that sell the "911" phone here with nothing but a big red button on it. you can buy them for $39.95 and they take regular alkaline batteries so it will work 2 years down the road when you pull it out of your glovebox and need it.

      Problem is... they are a complete flop. noone wants them. Any moron can get a pay-as-you-go phone here for $19.95USD (granted it's the bend over and pay plan where they siphon minutes off you daily even if you dont use it plan) or even less if you will accept a used phone. (Cellular shops here are pretty much scumbag hangouts.. they feel scummy, the salespeople feel scummy, and the places are always screaming Scumbags in their hand painted sale signs, etc...)

  • Budwesier Promotion (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cybergibbons ( 554352 ) on Saturday March 30, 2002 @11:02AM (#3253564) Homepage
    A little off topic, but Budweiser (as in beer) are doing a promotion here in the UK to win prizes... but it is the way they do it that is interesting.

    Several cans contain a "GPS transmitter" - when you open the can, they find your location, and a team of people turn up at your door within a few hours.

    First, this is going to be prone to a few problems, like people moving.

    Second, the "GPS transmitter" is probably a gps receiver, and a mobile phone. When it is opened, it calls a number and reports the location of the device.

    Surely these things can't be too expensive if they are in a beer can? Simply a gps receiver and a phone would cost in excess of £100 - but they would have to buy phones outright, so even more.

    If I got one, I'd probably try getting it somewhere that the signals would not get out of (convenient faraday cage... (car maybe)), and take the thing apart.
    • The other problem would be receiving the GPS signal indoors. The GPS's I've played with won't work in the middle of my house or my basement. The GPS wouldn't start tracking untill it was atop the Garbage truck on the way to the dump :)

    • >Surely these things can't be too expensive if
      >they are in a beer can? Simply a gps receiver
      >and a phone would cost in excess of £100 - but
      >they would have to buy phones outright, so even
      >more.

      A: They don't have to be all THAT cheap, since they're not in *EVERY* can - just winning cans. In the grand scheme of things, that's not very many.

      B: If they send people to where you are, in theory at least they can recover some percentage of the cans and reuse the units.

      -l

      • According to www.budweiser.co.uk, there are only
        25 winning bottles or cans that contain the "transmitter". Other winners are just peel off labels or pull-tabs.

        Since each of the 25 prizes consists of roundtrip tickets to Japan, four nights' hotel, and tickets for two FIFA World Cup games, the cost of the electronics is trivial.

        -l

  • Taking apart the phone is a violation of the DMCA. They should have the Chronicle arrested, and take them to court!

    :)

  • Mainstream print media dissembles technology to investigate claim? Whoa - this is Pulitzer material!

    Seriously, I'm impressed. Maybe there will be a career path for 'investigative hackers'

  • disposable cell phones (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xthlc ( 20317 ) on Saturday March 30, 2002 @11:14AM (#3253613)
    One of the better ideas for a disposable phone that I've seen came out of a student contest run by [IIRC] Metropolis magazine.

    It consisted of a thick "business card" phone -- a circuit printed on plastic and wrapped in paper, slightly larger than your average business card. The phone had about 60 minutes of talk time, couldn't receive calls, and had a single large button on one side. The idea was that you could buy a sheet of these phones for about $5-10 per, print your business card on them, and "burn" your own number into the phone. Pressing the button on the phone dialed that number.

    This is, of course, insanely useful. A first-contact client can phone you back with very little effort, without having to pay for the call. 911 emergency phones can be given away or sold in stores. Vending machines could let you key in any number you liked (say, your SO) and print up a batch of phones for you.

    I think it's on ultra-low-end applications like these that disposable cell phones will really find their stride. Even if Hop-On was legitimate, they'd have a hard time competing against companies like Cricket. Service is already a commodity, and people seem to like the flexibility and robustness of NON-disposable phones.

    • Re:disposable cell phones (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mpe ( 36238 )
      It consisted of a thick "business card" phone -- a circuit printed on plastic and wrapped in paper, slightly larger than your average business card. The phone had about 60 minutes of talk time, couldn't receive calls, and had a single large button on one side. The idea was that you could buy a sheet of these phones for about $5-10 per, print your business card on them, and "burn" your own number into the phone. Pressing the button on the phone dialed that number.

      I don't see the point of this over a generic pre-pay mobile. This thing still needs to interface with the network and the time used had better not be recorded on the phone. Otherwise it can trivially be hacked into a free network access pass.
    • Insanely useful - Huh? Why would I want to increase the cost of my business cards by a factor of 100, only to give people the ability to call me on a cheap, flimsy, awkward card phone? If you're worried that people won't spend a dime to call you, get a 1-800 number. When I call someone, even if it's a sales rep (which I have to do quite often) I want to do it with my real phone that is comfortable, has hold/mute, etc.

    • While I have no idea whether or not businesses would go for it, this would be insanely useful for 911. Imagine everyone carrying around, in their wallet, next to their credit cards, a card labelled 'emergency' that simply dials 911 when you push a button on it.

      Pretty much everyone in the country would spend 10 dollars for one of those things, even if they worked only for 30 minutes due to battery limitations. And you don't have to worry about service, as all cell phone providers are required to carry 911 even for service-less phones.

      • Imagine everyone carrying around, in their wallet, next to their credit cards, a card labelled 'emergency' that simply dials 911 when you push a button on it.

        Imagine how much more useless 911 would be in most major areas when anyone would have 911 capabilities with them at all times. The service would be saturated with non-emergency calls, the cost to run the service would skyrocket just to expand to a size where they could actually answer the flood of calls, and the resources needed to respond to those calls would skyrocket as well.

  • When Seuss becomes reality (Score:3, Funny)

    by sacrilicious ( 316896 ) <qbgfynfu.opt@recursor.net> on Saturday March 30, 2002 @11:44AM (#3253737) Homepage
    ...and also points out California revoked Hop-On's corporate status last month."

    Hop-On popped!

    -

  • Dang I'm getting that Pixelon feeling all over again. This sounds suspicious as heck.

  • Hilarious (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mister Transistor ( 259842 ) on Saturday March 30, 2002 @12:30PM (#3253942) Journal
    In a former life, I worked on a similar scam (at the time, unknowingly). It was for one of the first of the Customer-Owned Payphones back around 1985, called COCOT or COPTS phones.

    I won't memtion the exact brand name, but I was one of two design engineers that designed this payphone. The entire industry was new, having just been deregulated. There were about 5 companies producing them at the start, and about 30 by the end, so the industry experienced explosive growth (just like the .COM boom of a year ago).

    The two owners of the company had us start designing the phone. They then proceeded to march in Investors to see "the phone" work, well before it's design was even finalized. At first, we rigged a mock-up to act something like a phone.

    "Harumph, it works", claimed the investors. Eventually, we did design and have a fully functional payphone. But most of the phones out there in the industry were horrible. They didn't look or act like Ma Bell payphones, and the most critical areas, how much to charge for the call, and answer detetion (do I thake or return the user's money?) were dismal and highly unreliable.
    In fact at one point it seemed that no-one could get these areas of operation reliable.

    I assume it was at this point the owners decided to make it a full-blown scam. They sold the crap out of the phone. They sold EXCLUSIVE rights to manufacture the phone to at least 5 companies that I heard of afterward.

    The funniest part of the whole story is that my parter and I actually screwed up the whole scam by making the phone actually work well. Instead of doing a nose-dive in 6 months as they expected, the company endured successfully for 4 years!

    If anyone has ever seen the movie "The Producers" by Mel Brooks, then you know the plot - oversell the product many 100% - then BK the company and you don't have to pay any investors back. Well, the same thing happened.

    Last I heard from the owners, they were hiding out in Snake's Navel, Arizona, and one actually called me, late one night, drunk off his ass, to bitch me out personally for costing him Millions!! Snicker.

    Well anyway, I smell the EXACT same type of scam here. These are the bait for the investors, even with the admission that they are mock-ups of the final design. My prediction is, once the money is raked in, then actual production will start on the phone and they'll find there's no way it can be done for $30.00. The people they hired will be left holding the bag, and the bills for manufacturing phones that actually tunred out to cost $100.00 to $200.00 or so like any other phone.

    And the owners? They'll be joining the Scammer's Relocation Program in Snake's Navel, AZ.
    • D'oh! I was almost going to defend them, saying it was probably just a manufacturing delay, and they got some cheap Nokia parts to do them in the interim. Then I did a very un-slashdot-like thing, and read the article, and this passage jumped out at me:

      "For instance, the California Department of Corporations raided an online gambling venture tied to Hop-On in 1999 for allegedly fleecing investors out of as much as $20 million. And last month, the state suspended Hop-On's corporate status, saying it had failed to pay $400 and file its tax returns for two years in a row."
      While I truly despise "trial by media," and try not to fall victim to believing everything I read, I gotta say those statements are pretty scary.

      -me

  • Sell (Score:1)

    by KDENCE ( 558103 )
    Well it is time to sell the house and check in to the nearby federal penitentiary!

    Who would have thought that after you use this thing, we wouldn't want to open it to check it out anyway? What I think happened is that they took the five million dollars and put it in their bank accounts and with the interest "developed" these things.

    Oh, well it will be interesting for these guys to spend some time in jail with real criminals!

  • Actual cost of phones (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Hex4def6 ( 538820 )
    I had a discussion with someone that manufactures phones, and what he told me was very interesting. The current "bomb cost" of producing a phone is close to $100 for the manufacturer. The markup the manufacturer gets is sometimes less than 5-10% - considering the risks, thats not good money. The way that they usually get the money is through the accessories - the case, headset, etc. The markup on these - sometimes as high as 500%, helps make up for the disapointing phone cost. How someone can make a phone for $30 is beyond me - sounds like another dot-com idea to me.
  • From the article:

    "Hop-On Chief Executive Officer Peter Michaels was initially evasive when asked why the phones appeared to be modified Nokias. "Hop-On technology is proprietary," he said in a faxed reply. "

    I guess repackaging nokia phones is a "proprietary technology". He should defend his "technology" with a patent.

  • ok - so this is a cool concept in theory , but the thing that I am so tired of hearing is how we are making so many things "disposable"

    I would rather we learn to make thing _organic_.

    For example - I was working on making a Golf Tee out of compacted grass seed and plant fertilizer - this way, there would no longer be so many plastic and wood tees polluting the courses (only problem was that when I wrote up the verbage for the patent, I found someone else had beat me to the patent by only a month or so - even had the *exact* same verbage in their product descriptiopn... oh well)

    ANYWAY - screw "disposable" I want bio-degradable. If you really want to think of your self as the technocratic elite - then I think that the focus should be on doing all of the cool shit that we like to see, plus more. In addition to making some nifty new wibbidy do da - make sure that the wibbidy do da's that you make are HELP ING the world be a better place in the long run.

    This is related to a post that was on the Intel-Yoga thread. The changes of the world have to start happening with us.

    please - no more trash. In one hundred years we will all be a dead race due to the fact that the world is nothing but a planet sized dump!

    /rant
    • I would rather we learn to make thing _organic_.

      For example - I was working on making a Golf Tee out of compacted grass seed and plant fertilizer - this way, there would no longer be so many plastic and wood tees

      You do realize, of course, that wood and plastics are organic materials?

      • well while you may be technically correct - the point I was making is that products can be made to meet not only the functional requirements - but also be either totally neutral or beneficial to the environment for which they are designed.

        so - nit pick if you like, but cynical replies only show ones lack of greater vision for that which one is doing.

        at least if we are going to continue to produce such colossal quantities of plastic products we should find a safe and fast way of breaking the plastics down. Even though you may point out that plastics start out as organic compounds - please note that the fumes from burning plastic are very harmful/fatal. Why is there no fsat safe solvent to break the plastics down to totally benign (when burned, discarded or otherwise) states?

  • [...]points out California revoked Hop-On's corporate status[...]

    Holy........Are they saying the "corporate death penalty" (revocation of corporate charter) was actually USED by the Government against a fellow corporation?????

    Could be a nice precedent...

  • Their Web Site (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cjsnell ( 5825 ) on Saturday March 30, 2002 @03:33PM (#3255010) Journal
    You think that they'd be embarassed to have this Web site up. Did you notice...

    - The "mock-up" phone on their front page is actually just a peice of Photoshop handiwork?

    - The bogus Time article. While I don't doubt that they made Time (it's amazing what $$ can buy you), their fake "page curl" effect that shows their product on page 3 is a bit much.

    - I love how, in the article, they credit the Hop-On CEO as the "inventor". Inventor of what? I'm sure he's hardly the first to think of a disposable cell phone. The technology is obviously not his, nor is it Hop-On's. What did he invent?

    - Is that Scooby-Doo rip-off kangaroo thing missing her lower jaw? Or is she just as dazed as the investors? Her joey looks pretty stunned by the whole mess.

    - Check out this page [hop-on.com]. Look at the "models" on the bottom left. It looks like they Photoshop'ed the phones into their hands.

    - I couldn't help but think, the "Our Future" link at the top should have lead to here [bop.gov].
  • As I pointed out the last time Hop-On was mentioned here, the phones are a terrible deal even if they're real. The pricing is $0.50 per minute of airtime. [hop-on.com]. Most cellular users are paying $0.05 to $0.10 now.

    Even in the prepaid cellular world, Hop-On is overpriced. You can buy a prepaid phone at a 7-11 for $79.95. Other vendors are even cheaper. If you're willing to overpay for minutes, there are places that will sell you a prepaid, no-contract Nokia cell phone with AT&T service for $39.95. [phoneshark.com] And that's before rebates. You end up paying around $0.25 per minute, which is high, but half the price of Hop-On.

  • Mobile phone economics (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Yer Mum ( 570034 )
    Most mobile phone dealers buy phones in bulk at around £100-£150 (probably $150+ in the US) each from phone manufactures and receive the cost of the phone plus a commission from the phone network for signing up customers. The phone network makes this money back later by trapping the customer with a year's contract, line rental every month, and call costs much higher than the cost of actually providing them. Of course, the customer must think they're getting something for all this, which is why they get some free minutes every month. Pay as you go is similar, they make money with the expiry dates on credit vouchers and even higher call costs in comparison to a contract phone.

    So providing a disposable phone with a limited amount of calls for $30 is economically unviable, because the whole system is geared up to not having a phone with a limited lifespan in order to recoup the cost of the phone and network infrastructure and finally make a profit with later calls.

    I also don't see how they're going to do a voice recognition in a $30 phone that understands at least 10 words said in any American accent (at least) right from the first time you use it. Proper mobile phones have to sample each person's name in turn and you have to say the name again in the same tone of voice, and even this limited functionality comes in quite a pricey middle-to-high-end phone.

    They could buy airtime in bulk from networks so they don't have to make their own network and they might have some mighty computer at the other end listening to everyone screaming numbers down their phones, but I still don't see how it'd be economically possible at that price, especially when they'll have to provide far more phones than other networks as the old ones will keep being disposed of.

    As for those demo phones, Hop On probably bought a bunch of old phones off Cingular which were returned by their customers because the case got smashed or the loudspeaker didn't work or the buttons fell off or the customer wanted to upgrade the phone to a later model or something and stuck their plastic case on it.

    So, given all that, it's probably just an exercise in disappearing to the Caribbean with lots of money.
  • I think I found another fake investment site [slashdot.org] from the SEC at hop-on.com [hop-on.com].

  • Hop-on 100% scam (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jquirke ( 473496 ) on Saturday March 30, 2002 @08:39PM (#3257183)
    I initially was wondering if the US-based Hop-on was related to the Australian Hop-on.com.au.

    The Australian Hop-On.com.au advertised for months a free Internet service on the back of Taxis, except, it never came. Here is their website [hop-on.com.au], don't bother going to it, it no longer exists.

    After going to the US-based Hop-on, I discovered it was in fact the same company, as their mascot was that Kangaroo, the same cartoon character that appeared on the Australian taxis.

    So, this didn't really surprise me to hear that their promised disposable phone was a fake after all.

    --jquirke

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