Well D’oh!, Trivial Video On A Small Screen Is As Boring As It Is On A Big Screen
Mobile Users Want GPS Tools Not Mobile TV
Mike Slocombe
17 Oct 2006
A new survey of over 1,000 early adopters and mobile phone business users discovered little enthusiasm for mobile video but a keen interest in using handsets as navigation aids.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the study by market research firm In-Stat suggests that mobile phone companies may need to change their strategy as they try to encourage more users on to third-generation data services.
Your faithful scribe here is not really much when it comes to punditry. I’ve missed ‘big story” after “big story” and I’ve judged things to be the “next Big Thing” that didn’t even become the next small thing. But they could have saved the money they paid In-Stat to survey mobile users. People don’t want video on their handsets. Not very many years ago there was no way for the average person to make a mobile phone call. Along came cellular radio technology and the world of communication and business changed. this may be a news flash to many product designers but the number one thing people want to do with their mobiles (even ‘with it’ teenagers) is to make a receive phone calls. In the business world a close second place would go to email (ala Blackberry) or useful desktop functions like Microsoft Outlook on a PDA that would hold a charge for longer than an hour.
Mapping technology … for fining your way and even for finding where you have been .. has got to be high on the list. Simply because there’s a business and even a personal purpose to it.
Watching Friends re-runs or chanting Jerry, Jerry, Jerry is boring enough watching it on my moderate size TV at home. Boring enough that I instead spend much more time at the computer … and so do those trendy teens and so do businessmen with a job to do … having it pumped out to us on our mobiles has little or no appeal. Finding out where we are, at times? Priceless.