in Mobile Phones

Why Do Not We Stop Stuffing Mobile Phones?

20070828turkey.jpgAt least for a while…

In the last few years we have followed the evolution of mobile phone from simple voice devices to enhanced multimedia platforms with a plethora of connectivity options, memory capabilities, hardware components such as cameras, GPS etc. etc..

This has lead to expensive devices and in most cases has lowered mobile phone manufacturers margins.

In the same way we have seen a number of new services developed for our mobile phones: web browsers, photo sharing applications, podcasting applications, multimedia applications and so on.

The issue I see is that the applications and services development has not been as fast as hardware evolution. From one side we have the fact that porting an application or service in the mobile world is not a simple thing and, in most cases, has not proven to have a well defined business model. On the other side applications are not taking advantage of all the stuff that you can find inside a mobile phone.

A provocation:

We have excellent mobile phones on the market today. They have lot of memory, they are fast and they can talk to a lot of other different devices.  Let’s stop the hardware run for a year or so and let’s concentrate on applications and services leveraging what we have today.

This does not mean that handset manufacturers should stop delivering new mobile phones. They could still continue to develop new design concept and the trend to reduce size and space may continue.

Let’s make the mobile phone a better device concentrating on what the mobile phone does and not on what the mobile phone has inside.

Why do I blog this? Sometimes a dinner with other colleagues tasting a good wine bottle can lead to inconsiderate thoughts.

  1. Let’s make the mobile phone a better device concentrating on what the mobile phone does and not on what the mobile phone has inside.
    Wow!
    Somebody in a position of influence is talking sense for once!

    I fully agree that we need much better software rather than more gizmos bundled into smaller and smaller devices.

    Could we start with operators (the Three family especially, as I’m a happy ThreeUK user) supplying the very best software on their phones?

    For instance, a browser that *really* works with the ‘ordinary’ web (and wap pages) like the Opera Mini? Or a cross-network IM client like Fring or Agile? (Which could also have a cell-based location-finding presence similar to Jaiku?) And how about a decent push email client (like Gmail’s java app) that doesn’t kill the battery before the end of the day?

    Of course we really need a new user-friendly, operating system that’s easy for developers to manipulate but that would require co-operation with the phone manufacturers so will need a longer timescale.

    But there’s nothing to prevent network operators from forging ahead right now!

    (I discovered your blog via your comment on Ewan’s SMSTextNews and have subscribed to your rss feed.)

  2. Thankyou for your comment…

    Actually we are working very hard to bring some of thing s you would like to see on a mobile phone.

    There is a lot of activity around new concepts and new ideas.. the main issue here is not to bring to market a cluttered phone.

    Hope you customers will be able to see something hitting the stores very soon.

    Thankyou again for subscribing our RSS feed. We hope you will appreciate the content.

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