Lights, camera, action? Radio, MP3, e-mail? Wireless operators do not seem to know what their customers want, so they try to give them everything. Is it a case of terminal decline? 

Vodafone recently launched its new ‘Simply’ service package in Portugal, Spain and the UK. In June, it will be rolled out in Germany, Greece, Sweden, New Zealand, Austria and Switzerland. It’s a run-of-the-mill low-use offering with one key difference: the ‘Simply’ handset does voice and text. Period.

The move is a useful reminder that mobile communications today is far removed from the utility-based roots of most conventional telecom services. ‘Simply’ is simply a classic example of retro marketing, deconstructing a product line which has proliferated in multiple directions and returning to a basic core. Applaud now.

Needless to record, Vodafone dresses up this latest advance in marketing speak: “Vodafone Simply is the result of almost two years of research and development carried out in several European countries, including Spain. The conclusions of this research identified a segment of the population whose mobile requirements have not previously been addressed by mobile operators. These customers are not interested in the latest technology, but need an easy to use mobile phone with basic features to enable them to stay in contact with family and friends, as well as organize their daily lives. This customer feedback has been central to the shaping of all aspects of this new concept mobile phone service: Vodafone Simply.”

It gets so much better: “Responding to the requirement of customers to understand and easily read messages, numbers and symbols, the Vodafone Simply mobile has a large legible screen upon which only the most relevant information appears, written clearly in text. It also includes dedicated buttons for direct access to the basic functions. Animated helpful tips on how to use the phone's main features, help make the menu easy to operate without the need to consult the user manual.”

“The three buttons at the top of the phone mean customers do not get lost in the phone menu, and have direct access to the main services: the "Contacts" button gives direct access to names and numbers; the "Home" button takes the user back to the start screen and the "Message" button, which lights up when a customer has a missed a call or message and gives direct access to the detail.”

At last, a mobile telephone designed with the mentally infirm in mind.

Consider the following: “In addition, research showed that customers worry about their phone ringing in public or making an accidental call if their phone is in their pocket or handbag. Answering this concern, Vodafone has incorporated into the handsets three slider switches on the side: the first to control the call ringer volume, the second to lock the key pad and the third to adjust volume during a call.”

It’s ‘simply’ amazing that Vodafone’s press release was not written in double-spaced capital letters.

Gee whizz so what?
Vodafone has a point, even if it is disingenuous in claiming bragging rights on behalf of a simple product offering which attempts to demystify a complex situation which it has done as much as anyone else to foment. Today’s mobiles offer everything: digital cameras, music, streaming video, e-mail, stripped-down web access, innumerable software functions such as calendars and personal organisers and so on to infinity.

In its way, Vodafone is tacitly acknowledging that appending new features and functions onto mobiles has reached absurd heights of obfuscation. Handset manufacturers are perhaps guilty of expanding functionality just to fill the added processing power and battery life available to them. Not much more than 10 years ago, it was all the could do to squeeze semi-reliable voice services into a package the size of a shoe box.

All of this begs two questions.

Firstly, the increasing complexity of handsets conceals a host of functions that are unknown to or unused by the average user. It’s like the early days of the PABX, which housed dozens of features which nobody ever understood, let alone employed.

Secondly, and damningly, most of the bolt-on features of today’s mobile are poor (although not cheap) imitations of the real thing. Digital camera facilities are the most obvious case in point, but represent only the tip of an iceberg whose limitations are so routinely and cruelly exposed: think keypads, think predictive text, think sound quality, think video quality, think on… Buy a top-of-the range mobile handset and you get second best everything.

The mobile industry will argue, with some justification, that the range of terminals available ensures that there is something to meet the needs and tastes of all types of user, from teenagers to business users to the aged and senile. Yet the spiral that sees it cramming more and more features onto what are, after all, mobile telephones, is pernicious — given the ongoing issue of handset subsidies and subscriber acquisition costs.

As alluded to at the beginning of this article, the move from a basic utility service to a mass consumer market has rarely treated first movers kindly. On that basis, it is too early to say what the mobile terminal-of-choice will look like and far, far too early to say how the market will shake out or evolve. It is also far, far, far too early to say whether today’s mobile operators can retain their hegemony in a mobile market which they are expressly pushing in the direction of all-singing and all-dancing multimedia-equipped devices. And it is far, far, far, far too early to say whether the original developments of mobile handsets will last the course (think Olivetti, king of the typewriters, idiot savant of the the PC world).

Most worrying for those established in the industry that their hybrid terminal designs look clumsy and cheap, regardless of how complex in engineering terms and how expensive in manufacturing terms they actually are.You might not bet the company on retaining hegemony in a market that has moved from the logical caution of a utility to the unpredictable madness of consumer trends.

It's a mistake to imagine that even major players among handset manufacturers will continue to thrive ad infinitum. Had the car industry followed a similar path on the road from its humble origins to a global mass market, we would still have our Fords and Mercedes-Benz, for sure, but many of us would be driving cars built to the Chalmers marque. What a fine thought!
Jim Chalmers