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, April 10, 2007
Who defines the future mobile service market?
In Going to Market: The Mobile Youth Market Enrique Ortiz asks "Should the youth market be considered at all?".
Confrontationally I'll ask the oppsite question: "Should the adult (as in grown-up, not XXX) market be considered at all?", and Enrique seems to go in that direction as well.
Adults tend to be rather traditional in their uses of mobile phones, so why bother about that demographic when designing new information/entertainment services, except possibly if you are into corporate ditto?
Young people use the things that work through experimentation and word-of-mouth, and as Enrique says, it doesn't have to be pretty, but it has to do something useful (in the minds of the actual users, not necessarily in your own mind). New services, if deemed useful, can get popular very fast this way.
I made a critical statement about Twitter yesterday, but I'm starting to warm up to the idea as a casual way of informing multiple people simultaneously about 'whatever'. I though still consider an IM client to do the same thing, and better, but Twitter is even simpler to use than IM, as you can send a simple SMS, that absolutely all young people know how to do, and most adults as well.
Here's an example of a good (and probably more long term sustainable) use of Twitter: Woot! - A-Twittering We Shall Go: Get Woot Updates Through Twitter . Sure, this is what mailing lists and newsletters normally do, so again the benefits are arguable, except that using Twitter might be cooler, and that sent messages are optimized for reading on mobile phones.
Confrontationally I'll ask the oppsite question: "Should the adult (as in grown-up, not XXX) market be considered at all?", and Enrique seems to go in that direction as well.
Adults tend to be rather traditional in their uses of mobile phones, so why bother about that demographic when designing new information/entertainment services, except possibly if you are into corporate ditto?
Young people use the things that work through experimentation and word-of-mouth, and as Enrique says, it doesn't have to be pretty, but it has to do something useful (in the minds of the actual users, not necessarily in your own mind). New services, if deemed useful, can get popular very fast this way.
I made a critical statement about Twitter yesterday, but I'm starting to warm up to the idea as a casual way of informing multiple people simultaneously about 'whatever'. I though still consider an IM client to do the same thing, and better, but Twitter is even simpler to use than IM, as you can send a simple SMS, that absolutely all young people know how to do, and most adults as well.
Here's an example of a good (and probably more long term sustainable) use of Twitter: Woot! - A-Twittering We Shall Go: Get Woot Updates Through Twitter . Sure, this is what mailing lists and newsletters normally do, so again the benefits are arguable, except that using Twitter might be cooler, and that sent messages are optimized for reading on mobile phones.
