A Future of Mobile?

Among the many interesting presentations at Monday's Future of Mobile conference in London was a wonderfully provocative short presentation by Helen Keegan of BeepMarketing telling us that there may be no future for mobile!

For the details see her blog on the subject, but in short she presented six key issues that need urgently to be resolved ...

1. The tech rather than the users are the focus.
2. Silly, unpredictable, and often downright scary tarifs and charges. A regular moan of mine!
   
3. Apps and services created by geeks for geeks - what about normal folks?
4. A culture gap between mobile and web folks.
5. Western cultural focus of the industry.
6. The key purpose of the phone - to communicate - is being lost.

While I perhaps won't agree with every detail of what she says the vast majority of it is really stating things that are so "obvious" that it is amazing how little it is taken into account in the design and creation of mobile devices and services.

The fundamental need for communication will ensure there is a future for mobile - but how well the industry deals with the issues above will decide how painful or otherwise it is!

PS. Latest carnival is up on the Mippin blog - and I got a mention!