"There is a lot of technology in there." So what?

So what? What about customers? Is there a lot of customers out there who need this?

I am so tired of the mobile industry congratulating itself during endless conferences without any sense of marketing, or at least market history.

Honestly, how many people do you know that have already used Instant Messaging from their cell phone?
Have you?

I almost giggled when I heard this manager from this huge phone company saying "12,000 R&D engineers were working hard to shorten their product development cycle from concept to deployment". Good for you. Question: to do what, for who, when, and for how much?

And I am not talking about us, geeks from the Silicon Valley, I am talking about the global consumer market, you know, the US... Don't get me wrong, I am an engineer by training, too, and I love all that glitters and beeps.
But there are people around us that are not like you and I, people who do not even read blogs about cell phones.

Fact: it took 15 years for the cell phone to start taking off as a commonly found gadget, 20 years total to become the most important object of your life - at least if you're less than 25.

Vodafone Europe spent millions for the marketing of mobile video conferencing in 2003. Where are we today? It's interestingly hard to find public data about the actual number of users. Do you see many people mobile conferencing when you're in London? In Tokyo maybe?
Well, London people are not Tokyo people.

I was in Europe working for a client, a telecom giant, during their loud launch of MMS (a photo you send from cell phone to cell phone). I asked a marketing manager two years later how the MMS business was doing. She lowered head and shoulders sadly and just said "not as expected."

Then I asked my niece, a modern geek of 16 able to configure any cell phone in Chinese language in less than 30 seconds :
- do you use MMS?
- no, it's too expensive.
- how much is it?
- I don't know, but it must be expensive.
- if you find me the price of an MMS, I'll give you 10 times its value in cash.
Thinking she just won at least 20 euros of easy money, two minutes later my niece was reading the brochure of her cell phone, that she had never opened before.
The price of an MMS was twice the price of an SMS, 20 cents. I remember her disappointed look at the sight of my 2-euro coin for her...

I was so mean, it was the best and the cheapest market study I have ever done. With great conclusions.

Rule #1: It's not because your cell phone can do cool stuff for cheap that you will do stuff with it.

Rule #2: it takes one generation for a new technology to be adopted.

So ok, tomorrow, I hear we will have a cell phone that can do even more stuff.

Okay okay, I hear you... BTW, where are the restrooms?