From Communities Dominates Brands:

Two interesting milestones will be reached in September 2007. We will reach 3 billion mobile phone subscribers and the mobile music revenues will reach 10 billion dollars. The 3 billion subscriber number will be widely celebrated but also widely misunderstood. It does not mean that 3 billion actual people have phones, as 28.8% of mobile phone owners have two or more subscriptions (according to Informa, 2007). So we’ll only have about 2.35 billion people who own a phone, but more than one in four of those will have two or more subscriptions (and mostly also two or more phones).

Wow. Three billion phones! And you thought the personal computer was a big deal!

So, what’s the killer application for all those mobile devices? Is it search? Music downloads? Widgets?

Well, not quite. It’s worth remembering that the three most important applications for mobile phones are:

1. Voice.
2. Voice.
3. Yepp. You guessed it: voice.

And then SMS and then nothing and then nothing and then mobile ring tones.

Sort of.

The funny thing about this is how little innovation there has been in the voice application domain. One of the key innovations for the iPhone is the GUI used when making phone calls. For some reason, the manufacturers have completely failed in improving the key feature for the devices they’re building while being busy adding mp3-players, cameras and step counters.

Just a simple example: I still can not automatically get the name of a person calling me when the number is not in my contact list! All I get is the phone number. What good is that?? It’s as if web connected phone directories never existed. I should never ever have to deal with a number. It’s persons calling me. Not numbers.

Funny how the most essential application of a phone has been so neglected.

But who am I to complain. Three billion users can’t be wrong, right?

Right…?

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