What stops the 3G & 4G Lifestyle?

To an average mobile user, perhaps even a mobile user who is well-aware of the latest mobile technologies, I would venture to say that roll out of technologies such as 3G, 4G, LTE and even 5G will only be a piece of news! Because, these technologies, while they provide a fantastic realm of faster, cheaper and stronger mobile usage, do nothing much to the user, because the end user is more interested in what is happening on the mobile phone, and would rather not be bothered about what is going on in the big background of the mobile network, unless it fails!

Rather, the user is more interested in what new & interesting things that their shiny new feature phone or smart phone can provide. In fact, the very reason for the rise in the smartphone sales in India nowadays is primarily because the user:

• Wants to climb the social and aspirational ladders to own something that the “high rollers” have, or even because they come under a sort of peer pressure like "my friend or colleague has one so I should get one, too"
• Has heard about the wonderful things that one could experience with the smartphone such as streaming video & multimedia content, mobile internet browsing, and so on, in an interesting and exciting way.

However, having got the new device, the user soon finds out that it is not that great because you have a lot of “irritants” such as:

• Tedious process to access even the native apps
• Search takes more time than to read an update! For example – Having to go through multiple clicks just to get a quick update on the latest cricket score.
• If you want to know about trends and stuff, it is more time consuming & frustrating to look for them. There are no intelligent, profile-based recommendations, or pushed content.
• Typing URLs, even the short ones is time consuming & annoying.
• There are no intuitive or adaptive content that you expect out of a smart device
• Typing for say, 3 minutes to look at a 1 minute video clip, etc.

All these just seem too complex and so inconvenient that you get frustrated using the mobile device. And the funny thing is that data speeds or any other “back end” technology is not the problem. There is a humungous amount of content available out there covering differing geographies, cultures, languages, topics, serious to humorous, and these are the latest and trending content as well. The user knows that he can get to all this, but let us not forget that the DNA of the user is – instant gratification, “snack” type consumption pattern, fast moving from topic to topic of content, etc. In essence, everything has to be quick, like, “I want to be entertained, I want to know what is going on in the world & in my group, I want it now but I don’t want to spend any time or effort looking for it”.

So, even the most sophisticated smartphone becomes a kind of a passive, multimedia, touch screen phone; even to the educated, smart and savvy user because they have to put in effort and time to get all the goodies. The other argument is “why call it a smartphone when all it does is provide mobile browsing, multimedia & gaming capabilities & expects the user to do all the work!” Well, that’s it, isn’t it? The smartphone is not smart; it is only high tech and pretty. And worse, it expects the user to make the effort & be intelligent and adaptive. Now, that isn’t very smart! That is the real problem!

If we were to take the television ecosystem as an example of success at the user end, then there are many reasons for this. While TV in India has graduated from the black & white and "Krishi Dharshan" days of yore, thanks to cable and its proliferation, the TV companies realized very quickly that content sells. Of course, it also helped that newer technologies of TV sets like plasma, LCD, LED, HDTV, Digital broadcast, etc., coupled with interesting accessories like the Home Theater Systems made TV viewing much more entertaining and exciting. However, the most interesting thing to happen (or rather something that didn't change!) was that at the user end, the operation of the TV. It has remained as simple as it has always been! That is to say, while the TV set & the back-end technologies have become very advanced and high-tech, for the end user, operating all this has remained exactly the same as operating an old CRT tube-based TV. Now that is what I call smart! In fact, one could extend this to so many things in life such as automobiles, IVR systems, Airplanes, etc., where the technological improvement has increased user comfort while reducing the effort required by the user, to consume whatever is being served.

Therefore, IMO, the biggest challenge that mobile technology faces today, is not the technology itself, but the delivery - whether it is convenient, smart and easy or complex and cumbersome!