Mark Vanderbeeken points to, and comments on a very interesting book on this topic
Mark on “the mobile connection”.
My only comment is, they will have a lot more impact when the service providers solve the underlying user experience issues that are blocks to getting the most out mobile phones. The data plan debacle for instance, mMode, MediaNet, Tzones etc, are all examples of trying brand and differentiate services that customers don’t fully understand the value of. Branding and differentiation is fine for well understood products and services, but it’s totally inappropriate to try and highly differentiate services that customers are still trying to understand.
What’s the problem, well essentially services are still using branding methodologies that were developed for fast moving consumer goods, and it continues to be the wrong approach. Focusing on data services as a branded offering without taking into account the complete customer experience with product, service and other context is a very short sited approach.
On a related note, Mark also links to a report Mobile users clueless on data services, the survey cites the reason for poor adoption of data services
