Rants And Ramblings About Mobile Technology
Anders Borg writing about the fun and crazy world of mobile and Internet service technologies.
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Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Finding volume drivers for mobile data
I've for a long time promoted access to the full web on phones, as existing mobile-adapted services simply suck and users want to access the web sites they are already familiar with, but as this in itself doesn't seem to generate enough interest and volume and/or works too badly and is too expensive (so far):
I'm more and more leaning towards mobile-optimized access to e-mail, IM, blog, media archive and social network services as the real driver for use of mobile data. In the backwater will come the generic access to the Web, but the first will drive the volume use (and hence revenue) of mobile data. More young people have mobile phones than their own PCs, so in practice mobile phones are more private and personal than PCs, and mobile phones also have more built-in functionality and are more convenient than PCs, and of course you always have the phone with you.
The cost for the transfer aside (which is more or less virtual), the mobile phone is completely unique in that you can record audio and video and take photos etc, and then immediately send that to whatever service you like (provided some level of enabling via a local application or email/MMS). Try e.g. uploading a photo via a laptop PC when you are on the move, if you even remembered to bring/buy a laptop:
1. take photos and/or record video clips
2. set aside at least half an hour
3. find a table or at least a chair
4. start the PC
5. connect the camera to the PC
6. transfer the photos/videos
7. convert them to a size/format the service supports
8. upload the photos/videos (via a mobile phone or, if you are lucky, Wi-Fi
...etc...
Enter the mobile phone:
1. Take photos and/or record videos
2. Send them to the service
The mobile phone has a huge potential as a multimedia source (and a sink too, but there's already enough written about that), and if the industry just understands this there are also huge possibilities to earn hard cash, rather than just hindering this from happening.
What's a bit confusing, and that I've commented on before, is that all the interesting multimedia services are free. What the industry needs to realize is that operators should charge less and at the same time the service providers need to charge at least something, unless they get revenue in other ways. Otherwise this will just die.
The use of the .mobi domain sounds like a bad fallback solution that doesn't really solve anything. The key issue is to make appealing services that work in an easy and mobile-optimized way, that users ideally are already familiar with from PCs, and it needs to be inexpensive to download/upload content. The operators are responsible for making the last thing happen, but they should keep their fingers away from the services. Existing popular services have a head start on also providing good mobile access, and it's happening as we speak. We just need a reasonable business model a la i-mode for this to be sustainable.
See Umundo, for sharing video clips from phones for more on this topic, and touching on the same subject is Brian Fling's "Designing for Mobile" made public.
I'm more and more leaning towards mobile-optimized access to e-mail, IM, blog, media archive and social network services as the real driver for use of mobile data. In the backwater will come the generic access to the Web, but the first will drive the volume use (and hence revenue) of mobile data. More young people have mobile phones than their own PCs, so in practice mobile phones are more private and personal than PCs, and mobile phones also have more built-in functionality and are more convenient than PCs, and of course you always have the phone with you.
The cost for the transfer aside (which is more or less virtual), the mobile phone is completely unique in that you can record audio and video and take photos etc, and then immediately send that to whatever service you like (provided some level of enabling via a local application or email/MMS). Try e.g. uploading a photo via a laptop PC when you are on the move, if you even remembered to bring/buy a laptop:
1. take photos and/or record video clips
2. set aside at least half an hour
3. find a table or at least a chair
4. start the PC
5. connect the camera to the PC
6. transfer the photos/videos
7. convert them to a size/format the service supports
8. upload the photos/videos (via a mobile phone or, if you are lucky, Wi-Fi
...etc...
Enter the mobile phone:
1. Take photos and/or record videos
2. Send them to the service
The mobile phone has a huge potential as a multimedia source (and a sink too, but there's already enough written about that), and if the industry just understands this there are also huge possibilities to earn hard cash, rather than just hindering this from happening.
What's a bit confusing, and that I've commented on before, is that all the interesting multimedia services are free. What the industry needs to realize is that operators should charge less and at the same time the service providers need to charge at least something, unless they get revenue in other ways. Otherwise this will just die.
The use of the .mobi domain sounds like a bad fallback solution that doesn't really solve anything. The key issue is to make appealing services that work in an easy and mobile-optimized way, that users ideally are already familiar with from PCs, and it needs to be inexpensive to download/upload content. The operators are responsible for making the last thing happen, but they should keep their fingers away from the services. Existing popular services have a head start on also providing good mobile access, and it's happening as we speak. We just need a reasonable business model a la i-mode for this to be sustainable.
See Umundo, for sharing video clips from phones for more on this topic, and touching on the same subject is Brian Fling's "Designing for Mobile" made public.
