I’ve just spent a couple of days last week at
Mobile Content World conference in Sydney.
Two themes emerged for me: a call for carriers to get out of the content business; and Apple’s iPhone is proving to be a scene breaker.
Currently mobile phone carriers sell you a phone, with an often confusing data plan, then offer users a portal with some tempting free offers to encourage users to then go to the scary world wide web where charges apply. Users are proving resistant to this because they are uncertain of what the cost will actually prove to be. This is the ‘walled garden’ model.
This Portal approach from telcos is now referred to as ‘on-deck’ browsing where you access the weather, sport entertainment etc. that they provide for you. Examples in NZ are Telecom Xtra WAP Menu and Vodafone live.
It’s a restrictive approach to browsing on your phone. Would you buy your computer from your ISP who fixes you to their home page portal as the jumping off point? Even Microsoft let you change your homepage!
As Oliver Weidlich of
Ideal Interfaces said ‘It’s like the Telco, the handset makers, and the content providers are fighting over the customer”, the Telco with data charges, the handset maker with confusing unrelated applications they think the market wants, and the content providers trying to earn a living by having to do deals if they want to get ‘on-deck’.
However….the iPhone throws a rock into that puddle- the user experience is sublime, the applications work smoothly together, the web browser works and it looks like your desktop computer. The stats prove it; 85% of iPhone users browse ‘off-deck’ to the web, compared with 58% of other smart phones, (the overall market average is 13%).
Apple understands the user experience from Steve Jobs down, and the iPhone integrates with other Apple products like the iPod, Apple own the user. Outside the US anyway, you buy your phone from an Apple shop, choose your carrier, and set it up through iTunes on your PC or Mac. All you need from a carrier is the pipe, thanks very much. And with all you can eat data plans available in the US, UK etc., the puddle is looking rather empty.
