The Mobile Web Tablet

That last post got me thinking. The fact that I can’t get the name of any person calling me by having the phone hooking up to a web service and looking up the name from the phone number is such a sure sign of how far from The Mobile Web we really are that I’m going to make this my Mobile Web latmus test:

When I can buy a phone from the major vendors (LG, SEMC, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung) that, without me installing any special software, does that for me, then we’re there.

The web and the telecom industry will finally have merged. The telecom industry gets it and the web industry has the tools available to make it happen. Until then, we’re really only playing around. It’s like the PC-industry before Windows 3.1. The internet before Netscape. It hasn’t happened yet.

I’m guessing it’s about 2-3 years away.

By the way, does the iPhone support that? Anyone know?

Popularity: 9% [?]

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…?

Popularity: 5% [?]

A couple of years ago people talked about the difference between killing time and saving time when it came to mobile internet usage. Well, you know there’s progress when Google now presents no less than three different user scenarios:

“Rechis said that Google breaks down mobile users into three behavior groups: A. “Repetitive now” B. “Bored now” C. “Urgent now”

In one way this makes perfect sense. I just wonder if mobile internet usage can be simplified to such an extent compared to using the internet on a PC. On the other hand, maybe that’s one of the key differences between mobile internet and fixed.

When using the web on a PC you can switch between many different ways of consuming the net because that’s the flexibility a PC gives you. At the same time, you physically don’t move. You most likely sit by a desk in a chair. You have a full size keyboard and a large screen etc. A mobile device, however, is by its nature restricted. It’s also a completely different experience using a mobile device while walking around compared to sitting down. It’s even different if you sit down in a couch at home or in, say, a subway.

The mobile internet experience is the combination of the device itself and the surrounding environment. Do I have a surface to put the device on? Can I use both hands? Can I use even one hand? Do I want other people to see what I’m reading? Can I use sound or vibrations from the device? Can I read the display? And so forth.

What we call things affect how we percieve them. A “horseless carriage” and a “car” are two different things but they both originate from the same meaning. Maybe “mobile internet” should rather be called “dynamic environments internet” because that’s really what it’s about.

From that perspective I think there’s definitely more than three types of environments.

Popularity: 3% [?]