Mobile phones are destined to be tiny and no matter what technology goes in them they will still remain small. Sounds pretty trivial, yup..it is. Though this fact seems very very obvious, most of the companies are missing it by a margin and investing in a future that will never dawn in reality.
Somehow, the perception of an ideal mobile phone is a device which will let a user do everything that she can do from a desktop. A phone which will enable her to send and receive e-mails, create documents and presentations, conduct research on products and services, use search engines to look for specific information, download music, pay bills, do online banking, as well as arrange, tag and upload photos. A hope that one day the storage capacity on a mobile phone will be as large as desktops and that day we will no longer require a desktop. If you just believed in what I portrayed, probably you also missed the point here.
Lets go back to our initial postulate. mobile phone is by definition a small device and it will always be. It's largest screen, no matter how large, still 7-8 times smaller than 14 inch laptop. It's keyboard (even touch sensitive which zooms in..think iPhone) will remain smaller by a similar ratio. Given all these physical limitations, why will a user use a mobile phone to do such tasks, which she has been doing on a PC in the past. Well, the reason is simple: 1. it's on the go. 2. Mobile phone does not need to be switched on and then be waited for five minutes before it can be used. Thus, there is a trade off: Do you want to dig out from your couch and walk away to your desktop or you want to put the cable remote down and pick up your phone. And the answer quite simply depends upon the total expected time that it will take to accomplish the task.
Based upon the standard of general laziness and comfort, being a small interface, a mobile phone remains user friendly as long as the user is involved in a passive activity. In other words, the user is not running the show. Examples of passive activities are: listening to music, watching video, playing a downloaded simple game, reading comic (illustrated) book. Active ones will be: using search engines to find the best deal on printer, buying stuff from an online store, reading a novel (imagine a thick novel...War and Peace!), writing a document, creating a presentation, trying to read the A4 sized pdf copy of detailed bill. Simply put, anything that requires a lot of typing or a lot of scrolling will take the pleasure away from doing things on the mobile phone, doing things on the go.
Thus, the future of mobile phones rather lies in developing applications, which involve user passively. Apart from what is listed above, cell phone can also provide location based services, which are instant information: local weather, live score of a game, maps, closing time and phone number of top 10 restaurants around that location, very limited banking: reminders for credit payment last date and total amount due, reminders for monthly bills last date and total amount due, mortgage payments, activities around local area which can be seen in calendar, online access to personal information such as user name and passwords for different online accounts, currency converters.
The differences between active and passive activities are subtle but huge. Though there will be a variance in acceptance and choice by geography and age group, general trends will remain the same. And above all, one of the important things which cannot be ignored is pricing. Most of the customers who opt for data services, are either corporate or have high monthly income. An average customer would rather do all such activities online at home than pay $20 to do things on the go. Also, in North America where most of people drive to work will have no time accessing data services because according to my opinion, that is the time when people want to do such things - going to their office in train which takes more than 20 minutes.
While the telecom industry is struggling to get the killer application (mobile TV, VoIP), which will promote the telecom world from 2.5G users to 3G users, it will be interesting to see the kind of applications that will be developed around it. For, until the prices drop and customers see a point in doing things on phone rather than online, 3G will remain to be a technology of future.
Showing posts with label "Mobile Services Industry". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Mobile Services Industry". Show all posts
Friday, October 26, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Nokia Ovi - A tough door to open
On August 29, 2007, Nokia unleashed its ambitious plan to offer mobile services under the umbrella of brand name Ovi. As the photograph of the presentation by Mr. CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, President and CEO of Nokia, says it all - Devices are simply not enough.
Under Ovi umbrella, Nokia plans to unroll a fleet of internet based services in the next coming months. Nokia has started with the basic and necessary services: photographs, maps, music and games. While Ovi aims to converge all services to a single platform; it also provides the flexibility to access those services from anywhere, a mobile device, PC or internet.
In the present world, the mobile services industry is not mature enough to fulfill the demands of subscribers. Telecom providers invested heavily to upgrade their networks to support higher bandwidth so that users can subscribe to such services, but the content and access to that content were not on par to persuade the subscribers to use these services. On an alternative path, mobile phones made it possible to access internet on their mobile devices and use all the services as they have been using from a desktop. New mobile phones, now come with full html browser, support this theory.
However, the launch of Ovi opens a new horizon for the mobile service industry by tightly coupling the mobile phone with the services offered to access the content. This will help Nokia to create applications, which will be easier to use and have better user experience. Very similar to what iPhone and iTunes are for each other, though on a much bigger scale. Nokia gives the telecom providers and end users a new offer - buy our phone and use our services to keep and access your content. And telecom providers keep doing what they are good at - managing networks.
Ovi also claims to provide consumers easy access their existing social network, communities and content along with acting as a gateway to Nokia services. The success of Ovi solely depends upon its ability to convince more subscribers to use its services and Nokia will expect less number of subscribers using services outside Ovi. Nokia will be counting on the quality of content, easy access, deployment, pricing and usability of such services to expect the user to switch to Ovi. However, the content providers on world wide web and competitors will not loose their customers to Nokia that easily. While it will be difficult for Nokia to convince an existing subscriber of such services to use Ovi, the penetration of such services are so low that there are plenty of new subscribers, who will be ready to opt for Ovi if they are offered with the relevant contents, lucrative pricing and easy access.
The launch of Ovi definitely puts Nokia ahead of its competitors Ericsson and Motorola. The telecom industry has a strong demand of such services, which so far, the market has been unsuccessful to deliver. In a recent press release on GSM World, a GSM global trade association, AT&T claimed to have more than 5 million 3G subscribers, which is still less than 10% of the overall mobile subscriber base.
The Ovi services will be launched in Europe first and subsequently they will make their move in America, as the trend has normally been. Few days ago, Nokia signed a deal with Telefonica, a Spanish telecom company, and the industry will carefully observe the first launch of Ovi and take notes of its success.
Nokia has definitely opened a new market of mobile services and soon its competitors will follow the same path. It will not be long before these services will be an value addition to the telecom providers and a reason for subscribers to choose a particular telecom provider.
Under Ovi umbrella, Nokia plans to unroll a fleet of internet based services in the next coming months. Nokia has started with the basic and necessary services: photographs, maps, music and games. While Ovi aims to converge all services to a single platform; it also provides the flexibility to access those services from anywhere, a mobile device, PC or internet.
In the present world, the mobile services industry is not mature enough to fulfill the demands of subscribers. Telecom providers invested heavily to upgrade their networks to support higher bandwidth so that users can subscribe to such services, but the content and access to that content were not on par to persuade the subscribers to use these services. On an alternative path, mobile phones made it possible to access internet on their mobile devices and use all the services as they have been using from a desktop. New mobile phones, now come with full html browser, support this theory.
However, the launch of Ovi opens a new horizon for the mobile service industry by tightly coupling the mobile phone with the services offered to access the content. This will help Nokia to create applications, which will be easier to use and have better user experience. Very similar to what iPhone and iTunes are for each other, though on a much bigger scale. Nokia gives the telecom providers and end users a new offer - buy our phone and use our services to keep and access your content. And telecom providers keep doing what they are good at - managing networks.
Ovi also claims to provide consumers easy access their existing social network, communities and content along with acting as a gateway to Nokia services. The success of Ovi solely depends upon its ability to convince more subscribers to use its services and Nokia will expect less number of subscribers using services outside Ovi. Nokia will be counting on the quality of content, easy access, deployment, pricing and usability of such services to expect the user to switch to Ovi. However, the content providers on world wide web and competitors will not loose their customers to Nokia that easily. While it will be difficult for Nokia to convince an existing subscriber of such services to use Ovi, the penetration of such services are so low that there are plenty of new subscribers, who will be ready to opt for Ovi if they are offered with the relevant contents, lucrative pricing and easy access.
The launch of Ovi definitely puts Nokia ahead of its competitors Ericsson and Motorola. The telecom industry has a strong demand of such services, which so far, the market has been unsuccessful to deliver. In a recent press release on GSM World, a GSM global trade association, AT&T claimed to have more than 5 million 3G subscribers, which is still less than 10% of the overall mobile subscriber base.
The Ovi services will be launched in Europe first and subsequently they will make their move in America, as the trend has normally been. Few days ago, Nokia signed a deal with Telefonica, a Spanish telecom company, and the industry will carefully observe the first launch of Ovi and take notes of its success.
Nokia has definitely opened a new market of mobile services and soon its competitors will follow the same path. It will not be long before these services will be an value addition to the telecom providers and a reason for subscribers to choose a particular telecom provider.
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