Ewan from SMSTextNews about the problems enterpreneurs face when approaching the mobile market
…don’t bother… …your concept is good but the market is shite.
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Pick any one person of the street and they’ll tell you they phone people and they text people. If you’re really lucky, you’ll pick someone who’s actually ‘used Google’ on their mobile. Or, if you’re exceptionally lucky, you’ll find a teenager who’s used Facebook Mobile.
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There are some shining lights. Apple’s iPhone Application Store is leading the way there. Finally there’s an outlet for Graham and his Gardening idea. He can easily develop, deploy and monetise his offerings. What’s more, his audience can, thanks to Apple’s end-to-end deep thought, probably learn to use Graham’s service in a few moments.
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But what of the LG users? The Samsung users? The Orange users…
I want to buy this man a drink.
This is why I’m excited about the iPhone and the App Store. It’s not about whether the N95 has better features, the experience is still shite. It’s not about whether you’ve got the latest HTC Touch Diamond, it’s about whether you can do anything other than what is provided. Sure – the feature phones can view Youtube and live TV and get you the weather and WinMo phones can get a huge range of software (and all with individually crap UIs) but how many people buying the HTC Touch Diamond are going to get them. It’s part smartphone and part fashion accessory.
The iPhone did well because it was the first time I’d ever seen a browsing experience which acuurately reflected browsing. My previous phones were rubbish at this because they pushed their mobile-optimised and totally standardised mobile portals at me. I didn’t want to see Sport, News or Flirt online so their portals were pretty much useless to me. And getting off their portal was an absolute pain.
I see a goodly amount of traffic on blogs and twitter from people with N95s asking their friends whether they’re going to ‘upgrade’ to an iPhone and then backslapping each other when they agree not to. Well done, guys, you’ve just placed yourself as the Windows-using Beige Box owners.
It’s fine for the techno-literate to struggle their way through Symbian but it’s just not right for other people who end up thinking that their phone can’t do more. I consider myself to be pretty geeky but only ever downloaded one app to my SonyEricsson K800i and then, once downloaded, I never ran it properly or paid for it because the UI was so awful I just deleted it minutes later. My SO has never downloaded anything to her phone (but if she goes ahead with the Touch Diamond, then she’ll expect it to be as easy as her iPhone).
Consider the experience. Looking for an application? Let’s say two apps. One being a game and the other a personal accounts manager. Where does the novice user go? Let’s look at this as a novice.
On the iPhone, you just click the AppStore button and look.
Nice and easy…
On my SonyEricsson, I have to know to go to somewhere like Handango. I have to know what OS I have. I have to know what device I have, which brings a click-through to see all devices if it’s not recent. And the K800i isn’t listed on Handango. Turns out it’s not Symbian. But it has games and email…gahhhhh
The experience for ‘more modern’ phones is not much different. You have to know too much!
Hey, all that came with Palm PDAs too. Which is why people dumped them as soon as their *phones* could do the PIM stuff they needed.
I no tech virgin. I have a LifeDrive I swapped the HD for a CF. I’ve used Palms since the III.
The LifeDrive is the worst PDA experience I’ve ever had. It comes with the PalmOS 5 territory that *exterminated* all the hacks that made the OS *useful*.
All I’ve got on my LD is an OS 3(!) legacy app I need and another app I paid for when I was using a TE.
I have *zero* desire to find new software and try it. Because the overall experience is just garbage.
I’ve written about this overall topic here:
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/a-gadget-too-far/
And if you look at some of the Comments, they’re hysterically funny for missing the entire point.
As long as the technoids keep *missing* that point, they’ll bray about “stupid users” and wonder why their “great” apps aren’t selling.
I didn’t really see it as negative back when I was using my ‘new’ Palm Vx. You went to PalmGear (or Palmsource?). I had City Guides, VT100/Telnet, Avantgo.
(and I don’t care what anyone says about Avantgo, it was neat for the time)
I was attracted to the LifeDrive but overall the PalmOS seemed dated and flat compared to the WinMo stuff out at the same time and I almost bought a casio winmo device a few years ago – found it too hard to voluntarily buy Windows though.
The App Store will make a difference because users won’t have to ‘go on the internet and look for stuff’, they’ll tap an icon, log into the store and browse. Managing an AppleID is as hard as managing any username and password (in that most people manage it all the time for Amazon, eBay etc….and my Dad can’t manage his at all)
I’m confident that the experience with the App Store will be positive.