inquiline weblog

Mobile Multimedia Messaging

AlwaysOn has a great conversation going on between Scott McGregor and Sutha Kamal (who also has an excellent weblog). But stop the press - the fray just got really interesting when I got here:

Interesting discussion. MMS - as posted by 'Straw Man' *is* 'only a specification' (the author of this blog implies that as well). The killer app has yet to be found.

Not a single MMS app has the key qualities necessary to be called a 'killer app'. Those key qualities can best be summed up - qualitatively - by paraphrasing Clayton Christensen (sp?), author of 'The Innovator's Dilemma', a seminal work. Roughly paraphrasing, Christensen claims that a 'killer app' is not a killer app unless it lets a customer accomplish tasks she performs already, only easier, (probably) cheaper, and (hopefully) with a path to real extension of enterprise for the app provider. Not *one* MMS app can currently claim these qualities on any significant scale.

The only mobile killer app out there is the first one - simple, dependable, mobile, voice-to-voice communication, and the sector still hasn't perfected *that* yet.

Just look at the devices, all with pathetic UI's, no real *functional/visionary* cooperation among phone manufacturers/applications providers/telcos (some kudos to Nokia for at least 'trying' on this score), etc. They're all at sea, with product developmet on 8 month cycles, massive debt, competition edging in from other sectors, etc.

After having dealt recently with several key phone, telco and consumer products companies (as part of an embedded software startup), I think it's going to be a long time before 'killer apps' come along. The players in this market just don't 'get it'. There is a massive amount of 'stuff' being thrown at the wall, but most of it is far-fetched garbage, attempting to disguise itself as a rose.

Bottom line: don't hold your breath in the hope that MMS will 'save' this sector; it won't. The players are too confused, inflexible, and afraid of losing to the degree that they're not really willing to 'listen' to what consumers want from their wireless devices. SImply put (from the 'Cluetrain Manifesto') "markets are conversations". Until the players in this sector grasp that fact with every fiber of their collective-market-being, we'll see nothing but one promising spec after another go unfullfilled, for want of 'listening'.

Sanford Forte

Amen brother Sanford!

posted by Brian @ 8:37 AM