Dan Gillmor eloquently summarises the change that is coming to the world of cellphones: “The key feature of these new phones is how they become almost a hybrid of the two major communications devices of the late 20th century, voice phones and personal computers. They’re phones plus computing platforms, taking advantage of specialized network services, but not so complex as devices that they become as unwieldy as PCs or so simple that they can’t be adapted to other uses.”
For Trujillo, the CEO of Orange, the mantra is simplicity. It has to be easy to use, intuitive and so compelling that customers will spend more time online — on today’s and tomorrow’s digital mobile networks. A wide range of applications will be available, but customers will choose a relatively small set that are specific to their own needs.
No longer will mobile carriers have to create large market segments that put people with differing needs into a single category, he said in an interview. Each customer will be “a segment of one.”
What makes this vision of the future different is the insistence that the customer actually gets to pick and choose.
