Are on device portals doing enough to educate the consumer? Is UIQ a solution?

by: admin Sunday, April 29th, 2007

Rating: Hot
Answer to the question above: NO

Recently I had a lovely chat with SurfKitchen’s Graham Bradley. SurfKitchen is a company full of unique characters and Bradley must be one of my favourites as he says it like it is and is down to earth. I spoke to him candidly about the problems of finding on device portals and consumer education.
We both agreed that mobile operators are not doing enough to educate consumers on on-device portals and this is why uptake peaks and drops. Yahoo!’s Go has rekindled the interest in the ODP space and the market is picking up.

SurfKitchen in fact is a market leader in the space but has also been in a market slightly ahead of the game. This means that costs can be unduly high and investment more than anticipated. But times are changing and I feel that 2008 will be the year that every entertainment company or mobile operator boasts an on device portal.

But – one thing that I do think is that more explanation is needed. This is where I think UIQ could make an impact. UIQ makes smart phones simpler. But why can’t the same application be used to make understanding and navigating around an ODP? So when a user hovers over an ODP an explanation pops up “this is an application on your device with content on it that is updated over the air – it’s a way of….etc”. Deeper inside could the same technology also deliver prices or information as to when OTA updates will take place?