Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
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Saturday, April 08, 2006
Features: Driven by consumers or by competition
I'd say competition any day (and a thought that if what is supported today doesn't generate more money to operators, then a slew of more features will; re-iterated every year). Adding software like PDA functionality doesn't cost much, but adding hardware, like a camera, a high resolution display, GPS and lots of memory for music etc does, and most consumers don't use these features. This goes for cameras too, even though analysts and manufacturers make you believe everyone is snapping pictures on a daily basis with their phones.
The author discusses that the drawback with adding a lot of software features (despite being almost free from the consumer's point of view) is that the phone gets harder to use. Sure, a lot of that can be hidden away, but if those features are there at all, obviously they have to be accessible somehow, leading to cluttered menus etc.
The feature frenzy will not stop of course, but I hope to see two things:
* More differentiation in models, and even honesty from manufacturers calling simpler phones for standard or basic phones rather than entry level phones, but I don't think it will ever happen.
* More focus on usability aspects when designing the products. This simply has to happen!
Andrew Kantor: CyberSpeak - Ease of use lost in a sea of features - Yahoo! News
The author discusses that the drawback with adding a lot of software features (despite being almost free from the consumer's point of view) is that the phone gets harder to use. Sure, a lot of that can be hidden away, but if those features are there at all, obviously they have to be accessible somehow, leading to cluttered menus etc.
The feature frenzy will not stop of course, but I hope to see two things:
* More differentiation in models, and even honesty from manufacturers calling simpler phones for standard or basic phones rather than entry level phones, but I don't think it will ever happen.
* More focus on usability aspects when designing the products. This simply has to happen!
Andrew Kantor: CyberSpeak - Ease of use lost in a sea of features - Yahoo! News
