Services, services, services. Lots of handset vendors and operators have been talking about services, and how they’re key to the future. I’ve had a hard time buying into the talk too much, given the long and storied track record of big-name companies in the mobile industry rolling out dreadful applications and services. It’s hard to see this new generation of services having much success, either, unless some things really change.
I’m going to pick on Nokia a bit, if only because they’ve probably talked the loudest about becoming a services company and have launched several, well, useful examples. But they illustrate the biggest problem facing vendors and operators trying to launch services — yet again, they’re trying to pull users into walled, closed services, rather than going to where the users are, and enabling services for mobile.
For instance, check out Nokia’s recently launched Sync on Ovi. In short, it lets users of certain Nokia devices sync up their calendars and contacts to Ovi.com. That’s great — sort of. Anything that backs up users’ contacts so they’re saved in case of some problem, or for easy transfer to a new device, I’m all for that. But the problem is the only way to get contacts and calendar entries into the service is to enter them on the device or on the Ovi.com site. And the Ovi calendar and contacts app don’t hold a candle to the online services like Google Calendar that people are already using. So if you are an active Google Calendar user that wants to sync your calendar to your phone, you’re on your own. Unless you want to switch over to using the Ovi calendar app on the web. Somehow, I don’t see too many people doing that.
We’ve seen lots of attempts at social-networking services and IM apps that have fallen flat on their face because they’ve either been closed off in a stupid way (such as being limited to users of a particular operator or handset brand), or because they’ve been absolute crap. Since I’m picking on Nokia… check out Nokia Chat and the Nokia Email service beta. The former does some neat stuff — as long as you’ve got lots of friends with compatible S60 devices. The latter, at least for me, simply didn’t work at all.
So one isn’t much use, unless you’ve already got lots of friends with Nokia smartphones. The other (at least in my case) had a horrible user experience, and generated, if anything, some ill will towards the Nokia brand. Good outcome. I appreciate the Nokia Email beta a little bit, because it’s trying to improve the rather poor email app on my E71, and it’s an attempt to make my Gmail account more useful and better on my mobile device. But it didn’t work. Nokia Chat I can appreciate because it’s cool new tech — but unless it’s going to support those cool features on a wide range of devices, including non-Nokia ones, it’s pretty pointless for me.
So one service sucks, the other is so closed off it’s useless. That’s the recipe for failure.
Let’s jump back to the sync service. It would be great if it helped users get their existing calendar data onto their devices. Importing their Gcal info, or Ical feeds, or from Outlook. But instead, that option doesn’t exist. Use the Nokia service on the web, or find another solution. So what will most people end up doing?
Compare this to third-party solutions like, say, Zyb. It syncs and backs up contacts, much like the Ovi Sync service. But it lets users pull in contacts from a wide range of other apps and services. Or check out ShoZu for media sharing. It offers a great app for uploading media from phones, but it doesn’t try to force users to upload and share their media to some closed-off community. It supports a huge list of communities. It goes where the users are, it enables a better mobile experience for users with the services they’re already invested in. Trying to drive them from Flickr and YouTube and Moblog and Blogger to some substandard sharing service wouldn’t work. But ShoZu builds its brand by bringing a better experience to mobile users of those big communities. (Yes, I know that Nokia’s Share on Ovi supports uploading to Flickr and Vox… but it’s not added support beyond those two sites for quite some time now.)
So, to sum up, if you’re an operator or a handset vendor, don’t try to sell your users on some new social-networking site. Make it easier and better for them to access Facebook, or MySpace, or whatever social site they’re already invested in. Don’t try to sell them on some new IM service that’s closed off to most of their friends; make Skype or AIM or MSN work better on their handset.
By enabling better experiences with the services your customers already use, you’ll create a much more favorable impression of your brand than if you try and force them into closed and substandard services of your own.
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Right on, totally agree with you. Google is eating our lunch and most of the things I do on my mobile phone can be done with nothing but a browser and a few J2ME applications.
I think Nokia is betting on the Microsoft logic of “we ship XXX amount of phones per quarter and our services are on the device so therefore people will use it and we will gain mass market share.” Look how well that has worked out for MSN Messenger.
That used to work back then when the choices for service offerings on the internet was limited. Today however … a new service launches every week.
Will upper management get it? No clue.
I don’t see people taking mobile services seriously anyway for another few years. By then we will know what impact, if any, the open source releases of Symbian and Android will have on the market.
Contact sync services mostly won’t live through 2009. Zyb is now a Vodafone property and is thus on life support. Services such as LinkedIn or Facebook (seen the new ‘phonebook’ view?) already have mobile applications and I think people will eventually want to consolidate their phone with their social network.
Good stuff, Carlo. In my opinion, the points you raise are very valid and worth thinking (and worth fixing).
But while my Nokia-colleague Stefan agreed with too, I don’t completely agree with Stefan:
> Look how well that has worked out for MSN Messenger
Last time I checked, it has worked out pretty well:
http://billionsconnected.com/blog/2008/08/global-im-market-share-im-usage
Not everybody lives in the early adopter echo chamber.
> Will upper management get it? No clue.
They get it. They are smart. Smarter than you and me.
It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings…
–
Ps. I just wrote a follow-up post about your thoughts in my Nokia internal blog, which was just flagged to Nokia intra main page – and it seems to have sparked a good debate around here
Take care!!
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, everybody.
Tommi — I hope these things do get fixed. The gap between web services and mobile remains too big.
JT — I’m not sure I agree that Zyb is on life support. I think Vodafone’s purchase of it is, overall, a good thing, and shows that somebody at the big V has a clue. And don’t underestimate the power of a device’s phonebook as a social network.
Nokia Chat’s the one that really annoys me. It’s all built on open standards that are designed for federated usage, and what do they do? Lock it in a little walled garden.
There should be no reason at all to sign up for a Nokia Chat id if I have an existing Jabber id, and the extra goodies (if Nokia have done the smart thing and followed the xmpp standards for geolocation etc) would just work.
Open it up and you’ve got win-win, I get to use a decent Jabber app on my Nokia phone and chat with all my friends whether they’re on Gmail, Nokia Chat, whatever. It’d even be good for boasting “yeah, I’m on my Nokia phone, you can see where I am etc”, and it’d help to sell more phones and get people using the good bits.
Gmail works great for Nokia Email service, I get emails pushed to my phone that pop up faster than they do on my desktop computer. Does yours not connect at all to Nokia Email service initially, or is there some problem after? I would give it another try, the client for Nokia Email is a huge improvement over existing the existing S60 messaging app.
Davis, I waited all day for it to start delivering emails, and they never showed up. No helpful settings to check, no helpful documentation. Not sure I should go through the hassle of installing it and trying again when it was such a complete failure the first time around. (That’s the sort of negative experience that’s damaging to the Nokia brand I’m talking about in the post).
I left feedback in the beta trial describing my problem, which was nice of me, but didn’t hear back or get any sort of resolution.
I guess picking on Nokia is fair game.
Any company that started life in wood probably thinks that they can do anything ! Probably explains the well established NIH too
I guess picking on Nokia is fair game.
Any company that started life in wood probably thinks that they can do anything ! Probably explains the well established NIH too
Sayingthat it seems to have worked to date with 40% market share !
> I left feedback in the beta trial describing my problem, which was
> nice of me, but didn’t hear back or get any sort of resolution.
Sounds like an action point for me.
We don’t have capability to reply to everyone, but as I see it, we must get back to the ones like you who send truly valuable feedback. Otherwise, having experience the “black hole feedback box”, you probably won’t come back to send feedback again?
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