Insight from Steve Yelvington
3 July 2007This was posted on an NAA forum on digital journalism and the iPhone:
“The iPhone went on sale as I was boarding a plane for 30 hours of travel to the opposite side of the world, so I’m not in line to get one any time soon and my moment of frantic “I gotta get one” has cooled.
But the iPhone is a hot topic of discussion here in Kuala Lumpur where I am helping teach a citizen media seminar, even though you can’t buy it anywhere outside the USA.
This morning’s New Straits Times has a big spread on Korean mobile phone manufacturers gearing up to chase Apple’s taillights.
It would be an overstatement to say the iPhone itself will change the game, but there will be a wave of new phones with two key characteristics:
* The “real Internet,” not the walled garden maintained by the telcos. This means open standards, free content (with the end of the lucrative ringtone market), and fast access.
* A standards-compliant browser and display big enough to view real web pages, but small enough that some mobile optimization is still appropriate.
So the game does change. It’s not crazy to imagine mobile net access at a level rivaling computer-based access within a few years.
I think this means we should be thinking about what needs people have when “out and about.” While universal access to everything is extremely powerful, the real “killer app” will be mobile-optimized access to the types of information and services that are most relevant when away from the home.
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Cramming newspaper and wire stories into the iPhone won’t do the trick. This is a perfect opportunity for working the NewspaperNext innovation process, beginning with a “jobs to be done” analysis of mobile behavior.”
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