Simon’s Blog

It seems that 2005 will go down in history to be the year when 3G began to take off in a serious way. But, the mobile network operators and handset makers need to step up their games if they want to make 3G a true success in the mass market.

Forget video calls (which are nice enough, but not a killer feature). 3G is about enabling phones to become first class Internet-connected devices. And the killer apps of the Internet are: e-mail; web access; and instant messaging. So, the handset makers and mobile operators need to make sure their strategies are consistent with giving great user experiences for e-mail, web access, and instant messaging.

Here’s what I think their top three priorities should be:

• Low cost, all-you-can-eat, data rates. That means, unlimitted (or effectively unlimitted for 90% of users e.g. 30GB) download and upload for less than £30 GBP per month.
• Phone form factors that are suitable for serious e-mail, web (a full http user agent, not WAP) and instant messaging. That means:
  • Sufficent screen resolution - at least QVGA (320×240)
  • Access to a full QWERTY keypad
• Really great quality e-mail client, web browser and chat client built it. And I mean great quality - not the unusable rubbish that ships with most phones currently.

Does all this present a challenge for the key players? Sure. Is anything I’ve suggested impossible to implement now with today’s technology? No.