MobileMe and Their Sign Up Process

I am buying an iPhone sometime soon (probably next week), and after I made this decision, I have also been doing some research when it comes to MobileMe (the new .mac). It seems to be a very interesting service, especially for people with an iPhone (but it seems to work with a pc and outlook as well).

Anyway. What I found to be interesting related to Internet marketing, was what happened when I tried to sign up for the 60-day free trial.

If I am going to test MobileMe, I have to add my credit card information. This makes me wonder, will it gain more paying members to this service, or is it because they want to reduce all the people that just want to test it without ever upgrading to the paid version?

Is it a marketing technique from Apple?

They have obviously given this a lot of thought, and when they force people to add their credit card information, they will exclude a lot of people from testing their software.

It would be interesting to know why.

I have experienced this before, I think it was with SpamArrest. I had the same thoughts back then. Now, I have been a paid member of SpamArrest for a few years.

My thoughts on the sign up process, is that it seems that they only want people that are willing to pay to become members in the first place, and not people that just want the test. On the other hand, they would probably get a lot more members if they didn’t force people to add their credit card information. In the end, if the product is as good as they claim, most people would probably upgrade anyway.

Or maybe it’s because of all the people that might forget to cancel their accounts after the 60 days? If they forget, they’ll probably have to pay for another month. But I doubt that this is the reason why Apple requires all the testers to add their credit card information.

I’ll do some more research before I decide to test MobileMe, and it has nothing to do with adding my credit card information (LOL).