The other day, I wrote a post about the need for some form of forum representing end-users of mobile phones, which could define true requirements for handset manufacturers . I contrasted this with the current, highly-biased requirements-setting bodies, whose demands are derived from the desires of the mobile operators, rather than the actual preferences and best interests of real customers.
The GSMA has kindly illustrated my point for me, pronouncing its views on the "need" for handset manufacturers to hurry up with putting NFC into phones - based on a model which would see the SIM card playing a pivotal role.
As far as I can see, the handset-buying public neither needs nor wants NFC. Ignore the inevitable sponsored survey results in the press releases, which are clearly designed to prove a point rather than be dispassionate analyses of real requirements. NFC is a mildly interesting but fairly unimportant innovation, beloved only by large system integrators and the type of blinkered "mobile convergence-ist" who likes to spout nonsense about the phone absorbing the function of your wallet. Most of the NFC applications are "solutions looking for problems", especially the ones around mobile payments.
If the GSMA really wanted to help the manufacturers by "potentially boosting sales at a time when forecasts of device sales are looking significantly down" it would have told them to stop wasting time and money on things like NFC, and instead make sure they prioritise put decent web browsers into handsets, or GPS, or memory card slots, or xenon flashes for the cameras.
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
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