Dean Bubley

Is User Apathy About Smartphones Becoming Apparent?

Most of the discussion on my post is on my blog rather than Seeking Alpha.
disruptivewireless.blo...

Various comments here are misrepresenting my argument. In particular, I'd argue that US users are *more* likely to download apps to smartphones because they tend to "deliberately" buy smartphones in the first place & have a heritage of using PDAs. Conversely, European tend to get smartphones because they want a Nokia with a 5MP camera, and it comes with an OS by default.

Assorted comments have inferred all sorts of rubbish about my views on iPhones, none of which is supported in the text or indeed my opinion. The post isn't about Apple. For what it's worth I quite like the iPhone (it's much better than I'd expected), bought my father one as an Xmas present, and might get a 3G one myself when available. I don't think it's a fad, but neither do I see it having a huge impact in the global scheme of 3 billion mobile users. It's a bit like the original PDAs - fantastic gadgets for *people who care about that sort of thing and have the money to spend on them*

Data pricing is an issue everywhere, although cheap flatrate is becoming more common. Sub-$10 per month for a decent amount of data per month (perhaps 50-100MB) is pretty typical, although I know the US can be more expensive, and roaming is horrible.

Although many people assert that "everyone" will want access to the Internet on mobile devices, at present that is just an assertion. I think the demand, economic feasibility, and practical constraints (eg enough spectrum/cellsites) is lower than many evangelists would hope for.

As for adding extra *applications* to a mobile device, that's purely a specialist sport, and likely to stay that way. Most "Normal people" don't want to download apps to phones, even iPhones. (This is a flaw in Google's Android worldview too). Browsers and Web 2.0 and AJAX helps a bit, but still won't get close to ubiquity.