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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Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Anecdote: John C. Dvorak hates mobile phones
The title 'The Mobile Phone Industry Must Die. DIE!' is clear enough, which made me think why I consider mobile phones so good (not saying they are all good), focusing on everyday 'normal' use, rather than my role as mobile application developer:
A mobile phone enables me to have one single access number for voice calls and short messages. This is actually better than with e-mail, as I need to juggle three accounts on a daily basis. The reason it works to have only one single phone number is that it's more or less identity-less: If someone calls me to talk about Abiro it's not visible that I also represent Mobile Labs, my private persona and other roles I might have. An e-mail address is though either not anynomous, or so anonymous that people don't trust it for business inquiries (e.g. ...hotmail.com, ...yahoo.com etc).
A mobile phone is also individual, so there's no risk for improductive and meaningless 'I want to talk to ...' calls. Sure, you might at times (and based on calling person) not want people to reach you, so a 'human filter' might come in handy, but then that person could still reach you if you have a mobile phone. If you don't want to get reached at all, then you are probably not doing your job, or you are pushing up daisies.
I always bring the mobile phone, so there's no need for fixed phones, cordless phones, portable VoIP phones, telephone booths or whatever. Sure there's a cost penalty, but it's more costly to not be reachable, and when I'm indoors I use Skype a lot to cut the cost of calling/chatting.
All my contacts are synced from my PC. The phone book stores also e-mail and web addresses, so I can reach people other ways than by calling/SMSing. I would have liked it to integrate also MSN etc chat addresses, and that it had shown presence status. I of course also sync the calendar and tasks.
The same phone also handles e-mails well, including those with (M)HTML, so I can always be updated on e-mail, provided I want to.
I use it for browsing too, but I'm the first to say that the experience is far from satisfactory, even at a relatively high display resolution. Opera Mini actually provides a way better experience (performance, layout, data cost etc) than the integrated 'full' web browser.
Another important feature is that it's got an alphanumeric keypad and PIM applications. I especially take notes with the phone, as reminders.
Having a mobile phone with me always is also a security feature. If my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, then I can always reach someone. With GPS I can then also locate myself. For location (in general; my car hasn't broken down yet) I mainly use MGMaps.
I don't mention my mobile phone number at the site, which might be a bit peculiar, but there are two major reasons for not to: I want to qualify those contacting me before they are allowed to call me, and I don't want to be called at night.
To completely avoid mobile phones is an interesting notion, but only that. It doesn't make much practical sense.
A mobile phone enables me to have one single access number for voice calls and short messages. This is actually better than with e-mail, as I need to juggle three accounts on a daily basis. The reason it works to have only one single phone number is that it's more or less identity-less: If someone calls me to talk about Abiro it's not visible that I also represent Mobile Labs, my private persona and other roles I might have. An e-mail address is though either not anynomous, or so anonymous that people don't trust it for business inquiries (e.g. ...hotmail.com, ...yahoo.com etc).
A mobile phone is also individual, so there's no risk for improductive and meaningless 'I want to talk to ...' calls. Sure, you might at times (and based on calling person) not want people to reach you, so a 'human filter' might come in handy, but then that person could still reach you if you have a mobile phone. If you don't want to get reached at all, then you are probably not doing your job, or you are pushing up daisies.
I always bring the mobile phone, so there's no need for fixed phones, cordless phones, portable VoIP phones, telephone booths or whatever. Sure there's a cost penalty, but it's more costly to not be reachable, and when I'm indoors I use Skype a lot to cut the cost of calling/chatting.
All my contacts are synced from my PC. The phone book stores also e-mail and web addresses, so I can reach people other ways than by calling/SMSing. I would have liked it to integrate also MSN etc chat addresses, and that it had shown presence status. I of course also sync the calendar and tasks.
The same phone also handles e-mails well, including those with (M)HTML, so I can always be updated on e-mail, provided I want to.
I use it for browsing too, but I'm the first to say that the experience is far from satisfactory, even at a relatively high display resolution. Opera Mini actually provides a way better experience (performance, layout, data cost etc) than the integrated 'full' web browser.
Another important feature is that it's got an alphanumeric keypad and PIM applications. I especially take notes with the phone, as reminders.
Having a mobile phone with me always is also a security feature. If my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, then I can always reach someone. With GPS I can then also locate myself. For location (in general; my car hasn't broken down yet) I mainly use MGMaps.
I don't mention my mobile phone number at the site, which might be a bit peculiar, but there are two major reasons for not to: I want to qualify those contacting me before they are allowed to call me, and I don't want to be called at night.
To completely avoid mobile phones is an interesting notion, but only that. It doesn't make much practical sense.
