The battle for Howard’s ear
I was interested in all the fuss over the mobile phone companies and technology suppliers fighting over who has the best operating system for smartphones – will it be the Nokia/Intel partnership, will it be Google’s Android, Apple or Microsoft?
We seem to be seeing a battle for supremacy – it is turning into a ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ argument almost devoid of customer insight.
Most of the users I have talked to over the last few months – real users not the tech heads – seem to be saying that what they want is a phone that works – and works well. Although the excitement of a phone that can do everything you didn’t know you wanted a phone to do the novelty soon wears off.
This is most notable in the passing of Apps on the iPhone – six months ago it was the first thing people talked about – “what apps have you got” – people swapping cool apps. This seems not to be happening – not where I am anyway.
There seems to be more and more people who are ending up with two phones – the smartphone to be cool and the simple voice only phone to make calls on. The issue always with a multifunctional device is that it is only a compromise. When you look at a device such as the iPhone – it has changed the world and how people think about technology, but it is not a great phone for voice calls, the GPS is very approximate, the memory is limited and the screen resolution is now relatively poor.
The question is are we going to see a Nintendo effect? If you look at the video console market there are some clear parallels – a technology escalator of Xbox, PS3, Nintendo all trying to out do each other with ever more complicated devices and games. Nintendo come along with a simpler device and much simpler games and steal the market – will we see the same with phones – I think we will and it will come from a very different place – maybe a Tata phone?
Is your usage of the smartphone changing?
What do you think will happen in the mobile phone market over the next 12 months?
