Cell Phones - Love'em and Hate'em
Frustrated with your mobile phone?
You’re not the only one, apparently. Last week the Finns, those clever and lighthearted masters of innovation, held their seventh annual Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships in Savonlina, Finland. Aside from the fact that it’s fun, the organizers note that Mobile Phone Throwing is the “only sport where you can pay back all the frustrations and disappointment caused by these modern equipments.”
All kidding aside, the very existence of an event like this, and all the attention it gets (which it deserves!), bespeaks a great gaping hole in the market, and thus a tremendous opportunity for some future innovators. Because why should so many people be so frustrated with these devices? Well, our phones drop calls, and we lose the phones; they’re hard to use, and confusing for many people. Badly designed interfaces, annoying and confusing calling plans from the likes of Cingular, Verizon, and so many others, bad or non-existent customer service leads us to wonder, do they ever actually test these things with real people?
Most of us love what our cells phones do for us, we just don’t like HOW they do it. All in all, quite a few real opportunities for innovation here, both in the technology and in the business models of the providers. How long will it take until each person can design the interface to their own cell phone? When will we have unified address books across all these devices? How about proximity detectors so we don't lose them? All, we suspect, in due time; but whoever gets there first might have a sigificant advantage.
And if you want to take our your frustration next year, remember this date: August 25, 2007.