Mind the Gap!
For the last week or so we’ve been talking about how we use our mobiles on the site. Whatley and I have written diary posts and there’s been some really interesting contributions in the comments about the innovative services and applications people use daily. So I was surprised to read these survey statistics this week apparently suggesting the vast majority, the ‘normal mobile users’, have a very different experience:
- Over 60% of us in the UK are using our mobiles for just text and voice
- Only 1% had ever blogged using their device
- Only 3% had used GPS/Sat Nav features
- 30% had taken and sent pictures using the camera
- 12% had used internet/email
So I set off to talk to some Normobs about their mobile usage and began to appreciate that a gap really does exist and some of the background for myself…
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Take a look at the cases below and then let me know your opinions is the comments: What barriers do you think there are to the adoption of mobile applications and services? Where do you send people for professional mobile advice? How do you publicise your mobile service if you have one? What do you see breaking the barriers and achieving mass-adoption? Who does it well and deserves some recognition?
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Case 1: Mobile Email – A friend runs a small charity sports organisation. He travels constantly organising events and stays in touch with players by e-mail. Impressed by some visitors with ‘e-mail on their phones’ he did some homework on the network operator’s websites and called into a number of their shops for advice. He tells a story of confused and contradictory advice, being told variously that mobile e-mail is only available with a laptop, web-surfing and e-mail must be purchased separately and a 10MB per month allowance will be plenty – don’t worry about the over-run costs.
He’s ended up with an Blackberry device in addition to his existing handset and a push e-mail only service. Not a bad result, but less than he wanted for more cost. He knows he could sychronise his other data (Contacts and Calendar), but doesn’t know how. He knows he could have chosen other devices, but his operator told him this one was the only choice. He knows he could have ported his old number to the new network, but his existing operator told him it would be expensive to leave his contract and he could be without any service for a time so he didn’t… I explain some of the options he had, point out the unlimited data tariffs and hosted solutions such as Exchange Activesync and Good Mobile Messaging, but where does he go to set this up? He asks, who will fix it when it breaks?
Case 2: Premium SMS Services – A friend in the pub is intrigued by the Texperts service as I recount the cool services I like. “How do they answer the questions?”, he asks and I explain there’s a team of people who write the answers. There can’t be, he asserts, it must be automatic and therefore rubbish. I explain there’s definitely people and the answers are generally really good… He’s interested and I read out the number. He pulls up sharp – it’s not a ‘proper number’. If it’s only a 5-digit number it costs loads and they keep billing you again and again… like our mutual friend who downloaded a ringtone once and found she had joined a subscription service. He’s adamant, he won’t even try it. Ever.
I give up in despair as I watch him call a ‘118’ directory enquiries service and then lets them put him through to a taxi firm, clueless what it’s costing per minute.
Case 3: Mobile Applications – A family member is telling me about the ‘really useful’ Sat Nav they had on their old phone – it came with Route 66 bundled and a bluetooth GPS receiver, but the handset is broken so has recently been upgraded. The replacement one didn’t include a Sat Nav bundle, so in addition a new dedicated in-car device has been purchased too. Valuable software and a GPS receiver lie idle in a desk draw gathering dust – wasted.
The software could, I point out, run on the new phone too… perhaps the new in-car one could be returned? We extract the original memory card and insert it into the new phone – nothing. It has been locked to the previous handset. Fair enough, I explain, this is a reasonable anti-piracy measure, we’ll just look at the manual. We look – nothing. We e-mail support – nothing. We are stuck with a software product he owns, unable to use it. It’s lucky, he says, it came free. If he’d paid for it (he has through an over-priced monthly tariff, but today’s going badly enough so I leave that to another day) it would have been a costly loss. I concede at this point and the the dedicated gizmo stays. Software, for the moment, is something that stays on his PC.
