What’s Missing from the Mobile User Experience?
Posted by geoffwhiting on December 8, 2007
One of the panel discussions at Mobile Internet World last month focused on the concept of the Mobile Internet Ecosystem.
Berge Ayvazian, chief strategy officer at the Yankee Group and conference co-chair, served as the monitor. Joining Ayvazian on the stage were:
- James Pearce, VP of technology, dotMobi
-Donovan Neale-May, executive director, CMO Council
-Craig Cumberland, senior director, technology and applications marketing, Nokia
- Kelly Anderson, director of strategy, Telemanagement Forum
- Lawrence Moores, VP, global marketing and product management, RealNetworks
Getting straight to the point, Ayvazian asked the panelists what they believe are the “missing ingredients” in the mobile user experience.
Pearce spoke up, noting that dotMobi, which registers mobile Web sites with “.mobi” domain names, said that his organization is a sort of catalyst. Consumers still don’t understand that they can get on the Internet on their phone. When they do, he said, they tend to go to “.com” sites and end up not being able to access them. But if they know to go to a .mobi site, they’ll see that it’s designed with the mobile experience in mind. In the first year of availability, dotMobi sold 750,000 domains.
There are no technical barriers anymore; “the problem is awareness,” said Pearce.
Moores said that the industry is still struggling to provide a compelling user experience, but “we have made great strides.” He said that RealNetworks spends a lot of time with operators to determine how to provide a compelling experience. He sees “digital restrictions management” such as DRM problems, licensing, handsets and the spottiness of networks, as the major hurdles.
Cumberland added that the customer expectation is slightly ahead of technological development. “But the time we fix something now, the customer expectations will have changed again,” he said.
