Indulge me in a little Friday rant. I like predictive text on my handsets, I really do. Makes things a lot easier — most of the time. But I never cease to be amazed at some of the words in the dictionary. It’s something of a rite of passage for a new handset when I overwrite “shiv” and add “shit” to the dictionary for the first time, but it’s sort of silly. Would it really kill anybody to put that in there? And do people use the word “shiv” more than “shit”?
Earlier, I was typing an SMS about the band The Verve coming to town. “Verve” wasn’t in the dictionary, which was a little surprising, but the choices it gave me were “teste,” “veste” and “verte.” Teste, sure, that’s a word, but I’m pretty positive it’s one I’d never use in a text. “Veste” and “verte,” as far as I can tell, aren’t English words. (I don’t generally write messages in other languages, but I can see how predictive text might get even more irritating for people who do.)
Obviously this isn’t a big deal, but it’s slightly annoying to type out a word using predictive text, only for the phone to not recognize it and suggest some non-word instead, at which point you’ve got to triple-tap your original word to add it to the dictionary. Say I want to tell a friend to meet me at Caesar’s Palace here in Vegas. I go to type “Caesar” and it gives me “Bearar”. Bearar doesn’t appear to be a word in English, nor the root of one — so why’s it in the predictive text dictionary at all?
Like I said, not a big deal, and it’s as amusing as it is annoying to see the bizarre non-words it tosses up. What are some of your favorites?
Update Ricky Cadden from Symbian-Guru pointed out this hilarious video on the topic:
According to 160Characters, “A study suggests that over 70 percent of social network users said they wouldn’t join a social network launched by their mobile service provider.”
A couple of thoughts here. I’d hoped that by this point, operators have figured out they can’t launch their own walled-garden social services that are only open to their customers. I think they have, to a large extent, as we’re even seeing some operator-based social nets tear down their walls and work together. A phone that could only call or text other phones on the same network wouldn’t be of much value; why would a social network be any different? People don’t choose their friends on the basis of the mobile operator they use.
Second, when the social-networking scene is dominated by extremely popular internet brands (be it Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn), why would a user want to try to build up and maintain a presence on an mobile-only operator-limited service with a small group of users, as opposed to use their existing social networks on their mobile? The process here shouldn’t be for operators to try to develop or deploy their own networks and steal away users from Facebook or another site; it should be to better integrate the social networks their users are already a part of with the inherent social features of the mobile phone.
Last week, three of the major US operators announced $100/month flat-rate voice plans (with T-Mobile throwing in SMS and MMS as well). There was a lot of speculation about how Sprint might respond, with much of it saying that the company would probably just slash prices. Sprint today announced its “Simply Everything” plan, which gives users unlimited voice calls, as well as unlimited messaging, data, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, navigation services and push-to-talk for $100 a month.
Interesting. The canned comment from the CEO in the press release: “Wireless today is about much more than just voice. It is about data services - texting, email, video, pictures, music, navigation, surfing the Web and more. Customers want these applications, but without complexity and without having to worry about their bill. The $99.99 Simply Everything plan delivers it all right to the palm of their hand now.”
Nice to see him giving a nod to data services, but I wonder just how strong a differentiator that will be. Sprint’s business is still in the toilet, and I’m skeptical that its $100 unlimited plan, even with the data and other services, will prove all that attractive to many consumers against other operators’ — who enjoy better brand images and reputations — unlimited voice plans at the same price point. I guess we’ll find out, though…
I think where this might prove most useful for Sprint is in the business market, where companies can now spend a consistent and predictable $100 per month per employee for voice and data service, and the incremental cost (in terms of mobile bills) of rolling out new mobile services is nil.
My biggest hope, though, is that this pushes the other operators to add data to the mix, either in their unlimited plans, or by slashing their data tariffs for all customers. The pipe dream: that they start making data free. Perhaps that’s unrealistic, but giving up the short-term monthly data revenues could give the mobile data and content industry the long-term boost it needs in the US.
Carlo gave a nice summary yesterday of the state of play of Native Mobile Apps (like JME), as opposed to developing for the mobile web, quoting recent deep thoughts by luminaries in the mobosphere such as Michael Mace, Mike Rowehl and Dean Bubley.
If you’re a regular reader of MobHappy, you’ll know that this is a subject dear to my heart and one which I’ve written about on numerous occasions. My take is that JME is basically broken, almost to the point of being unusable for developers, with the porting taking a ridiculous amount of time and energy.
But as my fellow mobilists point out, sometimes we need the functionality offered by an application and if that’s the case, we need to take a deep breath and plunge in, even if we know it’s going to be absurdly painful.
But, perhaps there is a middle way, Grasshopper.
One of the basic issues with native mobile apps is actually a marketing problem. Loads of people download applications - games and instant messaging apps get downloaded in their millions. Not to mention Opera Mini and Google Maps. What actually happens is that people don’t download an application if they don’t really understand what it does or why they would benefit from it. That’s not to say that they wouldn’t understand it once they have it on their phone, just that it might be difficult to communicate in one snappy line of copy.
So the middle way, is actually to develop for both environments. The mobile web (perhaps with limited functionality) becomes your market entry product - a way to get potential users to try your product. A lite version, if you like. Then when they understand just how cool and froody the thing is, they might be ready to upgrade to a power user and download the fully functional, all-singing-all-dancing JME application.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not turning into an apologist for Sun’s JME. Those guys had the world in their hands and blew it. I pray that someone comes up with a better product and takes the game away from them. Or that they finally put their own house in order, but I don’t see any sign of that happening soon.
But for all the developers out there, consider the middle way. It’s an easy way to trial your great product, while allowing your fan-base to get the true experience when they’ve sampled its delights.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the merits of mobile native development compared to mobile web development. Native mobile development is so complex and fraught with so many pitfalls, and that situation doesn’t look like it’s changing much, despite the advances many handset manufacturers and platform providers trumpet. Myriad technical issues remain, while the difficulty in establishing a business model persists.
Obviously this isn’t a zero-sum game; there are plenty of instances where native apps make a lot more sense than web apps or services (or are the only way to tackle a problem). But are those instances becoming more rare? And will the best mobile devices in the future — in terms of development platforms — just be the ones with the best browser?
Michael Mace beat me to the punch with an excellent post today, asserting that “The business of making native apps for mobile devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and restrictive business practices.” The general gist is that native development is a real pain in the ass — and the business model is so broken that the rewards for those who undertake the task aren’t that great anyway.
Mike Rowehl and Dean Bubley both have good responses on their own blogs, and both echo the horses for courses point, while illustrating some of the problems with the native app business environment — in particular, Dean highlights the difficulties of distribution, given the lack of a viral mechanism to spread apps as well as the resistance of most people to install applications.
What got me thinking about all of this was the Nokia N82 I picked up recently. I’ve been pretty happy with it, as the hardware features are great, and the S60 software platform is improving (for one thing, it’s gotten a much-needed speed boost). But it still has a lot of faults from a usability angle: it’s just way too damn complex. Getting all of these great features like Wi-Fi set up are a challenge, even for a seasoned mobile tinkerer like yours truly. I can’t imagine handing one of these to a normob and asking them to get the Wi-Fi working. Furthermore, I spent a good deal of time installing all my usual apps when I got the phone. It’s hard to see an average user spending so much time getting things all set up. In comparison, opening up a web browser and navigating to a page is much simpler (though it remains far too difficult on many browsers).
Mobile web development isn’t without technical issues of its own, fragmentation among all the different browsers paramount among them. And if you’re looking to reach hardware or other functionality of a device, web apps don’t always offer much help (though this should be changing). There are plenty of cases in which native apps still make sense and can thrive (Dean runs through a bunch of them in his post), but I think the confluence of the business and technical environments (and I guess you could say the telecom environment, too), will push many developers towards the mobile web instead of native apps.
There’s a theory, that’s gaining credence right now, that we’re in a bubble.
The evidence cited is that lots of companies are being funded with ideas that are either a little crazy or being launched into already saturated markets. An example might be companies still launching into the mobile ad network business. Now I might be bias (working for AdMob), but I really believe that anyone who is really going to succeed in this business already has a product in the game. It’s going to be hard enough for a big company with lots of financial and people resources to succeed, let alone a startup with a few million dollars of investor’s cash.
Another clue might be that companies are launching ideas for mobile that have already been tried and certified complete failures a number of times previously online and on mobile too. Or maybe they know something that I don’t….
Consider Pumbby, a Belgian startup that pays people to look at ads on their mobile. You sign up, they send you an sms with an embedded link, you click on it, go to a mobile web page and Tintin is votre Oncle - that earns you the princely sum of 44 Euro cents (about US 65 cents). They say that they’ll send up to 10 per day, meaning subscribers to the Pumbby service can earn up to Euro 15 ($22) a month. Actually, my maths says that they should earn Euro 132, but that’s what they say on their site.
The good part of the idea is that it’s very quick and easy to register and frankly, the consumer doesn’t have to do much to start earning. They’re not being asked to change their behaviour significantly. They just to have to click on links that they’re sent in a Pavlovian fashion.
However, I’m very sceptical I’m afraid, for a number of reasons and it’s nothing to do with the atrocious English on the site. This model has failed so many times before - online certainly, but I can think of at least one failure in mobile with the same idea in the long defunct The Mobile Channel, which then morphed into the subsequently successful Valued Opinions.
The reasons I don’t believe that this will work are many and include; the sort of people who are interested in being paid a small monthly sum to look at ads, just aren’t very attractive to advertisers - being by definition not very well off; they aren’t profiling the audience very well in the registration process; paying people to see ads is acting against what advertisers want nowadays, namely to engage their audience; the amount of money available to pay people just isn’t enough to attract a large enough audience; there’s no guarantee that anyone will actually see an ad - just click on a link; if people aren’t on a fixed price mobile data plan, they’ll have to pay to click the link and we know that these consumers are price sensitive; until they have lots of advertisers on board, the amount of money anyone can earn is tiny; if they ever do get enough advertisers on board, getting 10 of these a day is going to be too intrusive. I could go on, but you get the picture.
I really try not to be negative about startups, but sometimes, I just can’t help it. At the very least, I’d expect them to learn lessons from recent history. As always though, I hope they prove me wrong and go on to achieve greatness. But they’ll have to change their business model.
Indulge me in a little Friday rant. I like predictive text on my handsets, I really do. Makes things a lot easier — most of the time. But I never cease to be amazed at some of the words in the dictionary. It’s something of a rite of passage for a new handset when I overwrite “shiv” and add “shit” to the dictionary for the first time, but it’s sort of silly. Would it really kill anybody to put that in there? And do people use the word “shiv” more than “shit”?
