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The Strengths and Weaknesses of Mobile Solutions

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The strengths and weaknesses of mobile solutions
Another mistake in the over-hyping of mobile solutions was to suggest that mobile solutions could replace many existing telephone and computing solutions. Mobile solutions will never be as fast as a fixed connection, or have anything like the graphics or processing power of a PC. For example, even by 2005, 3G is likely to be offering speeds of below 200kbit/s, while already residential broadband (ADSL) offers 1.5Mbit/s. The small screen size of mobile terminals is also a major deterrent to many applications.

However, this portability is one of the great advantages of mobile terminals and their convenience. GPRS and 3G offer 'always-on' connections to the Internet, so a mobile terminal can provide you with continuous links to the Internet and to your e-mail.

Great strides in positioning services means that increasingly mobile operators will be able to provide highly accurate positioning information. There are concerns about privacy, but location-aware services can provide highly convenient and customized services.

The mobile device can also be highly personalized. This means that there are great opportunities to use it as an electronic wallet or to hold personal records. Thus, mobile solutions are not a universal panacea, but are highly effective at providing timely, personalized and location-aware information. With technologies such as Bluetooth, much of this communication could even be between devices rather than people.

New mobile models
New mobile models will adapt many of these strengths and weaknesses. In some cases, mobile solutions will be complementary to existing applications, while in other cases they will be completely new.

Take the example of e-mail. Reading e-mail from a tiny screen sounds wholly impractical. But mobile devices can be used to alert recipients to new e-mails and read the important messages. Text-to-speech synthesis will allow these e-mails to be 'read out' rather than just looked at on screen.

Mobile gaming is a great application given the 'idle time' when someone is carrying their mobile device. Yet, mobile gaming must surely seem primitive when compared to a modern games console. Instead, games developers have developed ways to take advantage of mobility benefits -- for example, by having multi-player games based on location.

Mobile advertising is another interesting opportunity. Mobile advertising will be used alongside other advertising channels, and will involve other forms of marketing such as brand building. As well as mobile benefits such as personalization and immediacy, advertisers have another great advantage with mobile devices -- interactivity. Instead of passive and ill-targetted advertisements, advertisers can create highly interactive campaigns with existing examples including SMS quizzes and competitions.

The cost of many new mobile services means that advertisers have an opportunity to sponsor such services and become closely associated with that application in the mind of the consumer.

New mobile applications
Such is the diversity of new mobile applications, that forecasting this market is extremely difficult. Many forecasters believe that different European countries will utilize different mobile applications, and certainly the US and Asian markets will develop in very different ways.

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