Multiplying mobile: the mobile industry seems embarrassed over the continuing success of SMS when it wanted users to adopt much more sophisticated technologies

Norwegians, it transpires, send a lot more SMS than other countries (even neighbouring Scandinavian ones), but no one knows why. Popular telecom belief has it that SMS may have even contributed to a change of government in the Philippines, where fishermen routinely text each other to track prices for the day's catch and so optimise their income. In Scotland, tracking Prince William in his university town has become a major application for SMS within the local student community. We see emerging examples of spam, and even 'blue jacking' with short range connections providing the opportunity for anonymous, familiar messaging. Young people in Germany have developed highly elaborate social rituals around texting.

All are intriguing examples of how we both adopt and adapt any technology to suit human behaviour. The burgeoning growth of the industry to well past the billion subscriber mark will propel this still further.

But for all its numbers, mobile telecom is a difficult thing to define in terms of culture and application, and when it comes to more advanced services, we are in uncharted territory. All this makes it difficult for the industry to understand consistent human behaviour in terms of the mobile and apply it to the generation of new services. Why do some ideas work and others don't? One European operator declares that 70 per cent of the people who buy its handset and service packages, but find they can't set up the service first time around, will never return to the service. Another asserts that it doesn't matter how complex the service access is, usage always depends on how attractive the service is fundamentally.

And then there is the curious example of i-mode, now at the two million active subscriber point in Europe, but still considered clunky and even, in some ways, amateurish, by many in the telecom industry. NTT DoCoMo's Takeshi Natsuno, the 'Father of i-mode', has never had any doubts why it succeeded: 'not bandwidth, nor standards, nor unique Japanese culture but [just] fun and convenience' he asserted at the recent 3GSM conference. Evidently on a roll, he continued: 'If I can't explain [the service] to my wife, I won't launch it.' The answer may seem too simple (if not downright sexist) to the rest of the industry that still seems to be engaged in a semi-permanent debate over, well, bandwidth and standards, if not actually culture. And when it is not doing that, it is debating the identity of the phone: whether it is a voice terminal, messaging device or some sort of PC in the pocket still remains to be resolved. And it seems to remain embarrassed over the continuing success of SMS when it wanted users to adopt much more sophisticated technologies. Even now, industry insiders are unwilling to confess how MMS is really performing in major markets, but suggestions abound that traffic continues to be limited.

But everything is evolving. In fact, even NTT DoCoMo says it wants to move from applications that merely involve people 'killing time' to what it describes as 'purposeful applications' and foresees a change of era from essentially mobile entertainment to mobile lifestyle. What this actually means in practice remains to be seen, but with a good track record, the operator must be odds-on favourite to achieve early success in the next stage of mass-market development. The world is more than i-mode, it must be said. But maybe it is time for a rethink and to develop a realisation that the industry should not continue to operate in the same old ways, usually technology-centric attitudes that always come at the expense of users.

Stephen McClelland, editorial director, Telecommunications[TM] International

COPYRIGHT 2004 Horizon House Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group