We've had a lot of discussions recently about the needs and wants of mobile users, specifically mobile bloggers.
I've spent the past few years actively involved in Mobile Internet applications. As we can safely state that Mobile Internet applications have not reached a majority of potential users it is good to take a step back from the technologies involved and focus on the end users and what they might conceivably want.
Most people use phones for talking and, at least outside the US, for text messaging.
Person to person picture messaging has not taken off significantly, but that may be a chicken and egg kind of thing. Why should I picture message while 95%+ of the people I know don't have phones that support it?
The users ARE however willing to share their pictures with others, but they seem reluctant to do so within the walled garden provided by telecom operators and handset manufacturers. It's the shoebox scenario. I want to keep all my pictures in a shoebox, but I'm particular to where the shoebox is stored. The shoebox should preferably be on 'my shelf'. Therefore the user needs to have control, or at least feel as if she had control over where the pictures go. And that means outside the walled garden of the operators - and into TypePad, n'est-ce pas?
Mobile bandwidth costs are also a big issue. Take Iceland for instance, the telecom companies seem to be charging something like 15 US dollars per Megabyte transferred in either direction.
Posted by: Már Örlygsson | 15.07.2003 at 11:48
hmmm... not quite. It's more like $6.50 per Megabyte, according to http://siminn.is/control/index?pid=10687
If you want to play with numbers, however, calculate the cost per megabyte of SMS ;-)
Posted by: t | 15.07.2003 at 20:21