I am (nearly) terribly sorry that I appear to be cross-posting a lot of great stuff from the good folks at Gawker/Gizmodo these days rather than furthering the world’s knowledge with my (presumed) insights but this one is – yet again – hilarious:
Image credit: http://gizmodo.com/5419435/a-romance-flowchart-when-is-it-inappropriate-to-use-your-iphone
Here’s a cool graphic from the good folks over at Lifehacker/Gawker on the size and significance of the Internet.
Image credit: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/12/500x_theinternetisbig.jpg
It was today, 30 years ago, that NTT (now NTT DoCoMo) launched the world’s first commercial mobile cellular telecoms network in Tokyo with 88 base stations and, boy, did we come a long way since. Take fees for a start: there was a $2,000 sign-up fee and then a monthly fee of $300. On top of that, you would be charged $1 per minute voice. A handset weighed in at a cool 10kg (more than some budget airlines allow you as hand luggage these days; but then you would probably only fly First if you had one of those…). Nokia was still into wellies at the time, I think… 😉
In its first 10 years, mobile phone subscribers “amassed” a rather meagre 4m subscribers. The second decade was significantly better: it grew to 740m! Fixed-line telephony took 120 years to break 1bn users, mobile was dramatically faster.
If you want to learn more, head over to the unfathomable insights of Tomi Ahonen who dedicated a post to the date (and every milestone since) that will take you a good half hour to read. Well worth it!
And now, lean back, and have a glass on the arguably biggest media revolution since the printing press (because, my dear “1st World” readers, most people from “other” parts of the world, would not have any access to digital media without mobile phones at all).
And for every stickler amongst you: Dr Martin Cooper placed the first “proper” mobile phone call on 3 April 1973 but the first proper mobile network was NTT’s to claim (and someone needs to update Wikipedia as to that. Tomi?).
All of it of course went even further back than that. See:
Image credit: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/file.php/3317/T307_1_010i.jpg
Quick facts: I am an iPhone user. I wanted one, I am based in the UK. What to do? Switch to O2, which had the exclusivity for this. This post is not about bandwidth, 3G availability or anything like that – I have not (much) to complain about this actually. It is not about the iPhone either.
This post is about the simple mistakes network operators (plural; O2 is not alone here) make by not living up to their own messages. Listening to customers and identifying (and answering!) user needs.
Back story: I have an iPhone 3G on a £45/month plan, which gives you countless voice minutes and lots of SMS and unlimited data – in the UK that is. In short, I do not normally have to pay anything for (UK) calls and texts, hence the tariff. Now, if you dare travel with your iPhone, you’re in for nasty surprises. The only thing O2 UK has to offer is slices of 10 or 50MB of data for some hefty sum.
One of the most insulting things about this is this: I used to have a Blackberry on O2 and, you see, you can purchase an international roaming plan that gives you blanket data coverage on your device when abroad for – if I remember correctly – £25/month extra. Would I take this? Any day. Does this exist for iPhone tariffs? No.
O2 UK would be able to easily deduce that I am traveling regularly. Great opportunity to hook me into an even dearer deal, you might think (ad slogans include “We’re better, Connected” and “O2 can do”). But wrong you are. Whenever I travel with O2 abroad (and this is on an O2 network), this is what I get:
They actually send me at least 3-4 SMS with various warnings and alerts about how expensive and truly nasty it is to use my (O2-purchased) phone to its full potential and capacity whenever I dare leaving British soil. Connected? Can do? Not at all! Very inspiring. NOT!
Does it offer ANY solution to my apparent need? No. Does it try? No. What does this say about how important I am to them as a customer? A lot. And nothing good either.
It reveals a very “last century” way of looking at life: users are basically being perceived as revenue-generating units rather than someone the brand even attempts to communicate with. This is a very short-term view of the world, and one that is bound to fail quickly. Why? Because I am very likely to switch carriers (I have already unlocked my iPhone, which you can – incidentally – do here).
Now, O2, listen up: will I switch because there are so many other so much better offers out there? No. Will I do it because I fear the charges? No. I might end up paying the same as before. But that’s OK. I will do it because you, my dear carrier, showed me that you do not give a toss about me as your customer and you failed to deliver on your promise (“connected”, “can do”). I beg this will change about 2 weeks before my contract with you runs out: you will promise me everything under the sun to keep me but this is cheap, and I will not have it (as, I suspect, will apply to countless others).
Here’s the solution: Try and build some trust in your brand and your actions (Zappos anyone?). The reference to Zappos is not only a fashionable one (and, yes, I know it turns up in every man and his dog’s presentation these days; I used it myself a couple of weeks ago… But Zappos business is, get this, O2, to deliver happiness. You think that this is over the top? Think again: Tony Hsieh just sold his company for a very real-worldly price of $800 million to Amazon. His company is America’s biggest shoe retailer. Did I say shoes? Happiness!
Do you have to go that far? I would wish you would. But, dear O2, a little respect and care would already do it. Any of this? None I can see or hear, and your hotline will know I have tried! In modern “Tweetish”: #fail.
Listen and deliver. Then the rest will come. Until then, it’ll be Vodafone for me (who at least abolished roaming charges) or Orange (if they manage to learn from the above in time before my contract runs out).
Good bye!
Here’s this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists (its 201st iteration in fact). This week, the Carnival is hosted over at Phil Barrett’s Burning the Bacon blog, and he has lots of goodies to share, including my own post showing an example of why Nokia struggles. Besides this, you will find posts on:
Go now and give it a good read. You’ll find the carnival here.
It is conference season and one of the more exciting ones kicks off in Berlin this week: Mobile 2.0 opens its gates on Tuesday and boasts an exceptional line-up to look at the future of mobile.
The very, very high-profile set-up of speakers includes:
and many, many more, including, yes, yours truly (I’ll be on two panels, namely on the succinctly titled panel on “redefining the mobile content marketplace: exploring the growth, development and industry implications of mobile app stores” and on “building strategies around the drivers of innovation in mobile web 2.0”).
You can register here, and, believe me, it’ll be worth it. It is an exciting topic with top speakers in an exciting city. Make your way over and join us!
See you all in Berlin! Ping me on Twitter (@vhirsch) if you want to get in touch.
First, Samsung announced it would drop Symbian from its smartphones in 2010 in favour of its new, home-brew bada OS. Then Nokia said it would drop Symbian (albeit not immediately) from its flagship N-series devices replacing it with Maemo, the OS that premiered on a Nokia device on the recently released geek dream, the N900.
It is said that there are
no current plans for Maemo devices in the […] X-Series range or the popular [?] E-Series enterprise range
but the word “current” suggests that this might well change soon, too.
This would leave Symbian without its two largest OEM supporters. Will there still be a future for it?
Symbian of course boasts a still very impressive number of legacy devices, and it will therefore be here for a while. However, what does the long-term outlook look like? Android, LiMo, etc all “boast” a nimbler, more agile set-up, allowing for faster development and, arguably, better user experience. This is not necessarily Symbian’s fault (it carries with it its legacy around) but it makes it that much harder for it to reinvent itself.
I am not sure if there is place (and – timewise – the runway) to reinvent itself without the backing of big OEMs. I would be surprised if carriers would use it; they – even more than OEM – require adaptability and customization, which the newer platforms seem better suited to serve. Vodafone’s choice of LiMo for their first two Vodafone 360 devices is testament to that.
The ever-bright Tomi Ahonen suggested a comparison with DOS/Windows and MacOS: he compares Symbian to DOS, Maemo to Windows and iPhone to MacOS: MacOS led in UI and leads to this day. DOS outsold MacOS in spite of its dramatic inferiority because of the legacy instal base. Windows then overlaid DOS and rolled out on all the legacy devices with MacOS, as a result, always playing second fiddle despite its superiority.
The market place in mobile looks different though: DOS was nigh dominant (outside the mainframe and large enterprise side of things) whereas Symbian “only” covers about 5% of the current market. It is big but probably not big enough to bridge the DOS/Windows migration gap. With Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, LiMo, JavaFX (if that ever takes of properly), etc all on the map, too, the situation is very different to the DOS/Windows/MacOS world. Would Nokia be quicker in execution, I might still look at it differently but, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be that way.
So is it good bye, Symbian, then?
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