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OK, so WAP was a dog. Despite the hype and promises of the inter­net on your mobile, the real­ity was so far behind to make most users (all 3 of them) give up in despair. But that was OK because 3G came along to solve all that. Make video calls. Watch TV clips. And get the inter­net on your mobile (again – no really).

The take up of 3G ser­vices has been slow to say the least. As Kim Ki-ho, Samsung’s senior VP told del­e­gates to the Sam­sung 4G forum,

“3G was a fail­ure. The mar­ket did not respond, and it is already becom­ing an old-fashioned technology.”

The solu­tion is, of course, more band­width. The new tech­nol­ogy, imag­i­na­tively named 4G, will offer 100 megabits per sec­ond for users on the move and a pretty pokey 1 giga­bit per sec­ond when they are stationary.

But is the prob­lem really in the tech­nol­ogy or is it in the marketing?

3G has largely failed to cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion of cus­tomers out­side of Japan (where it accounts for some 50% of the mar­ket). In some areas it suf­fers from the net­work effects prin­ci­ple (it’s not much use if you can make video calls but none of your friends can). In oth­ers it suf­fers from mobile form fac­tors that don’t deliver a reward­ing view­ing expe­ri­ence – the peo­ple who are expected to watch TV on their micro­scopic mobiles are the same peo­ple who are rush­ing out to buy 42″ plasma TVs. And the abil­ity to watch clips and shows is being directed at an audi­ence that is quickly retreat­ing from tra­di­tional push media.

It’s as if the SMS les­son hasn’t been learnt. SMS suc­ceeded because it enabled pre­domi­nently young users to com­mu­ni­cate quickly, cheaply and in a way that dif­fer­en­ti­ated them from the grown up world around them. It was fast and two way – and even bet­ter, cre­ated its own language.

3G, as it is cur­rently sold, is typ­i­cally pas­sive. Watch this. Lis­ten to that. Play this game (by your­self). If 3G (or 4G for that mat­ter) is to cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion of non-business cus­tomers then it needs to find appli­ca­tions that help peo­ple make con­nec­tions, rein­force bonds, and com­mu­ni­cate with oth­ers in new and inter­est­ing ways. With­out this, no amount of addi­tional band­width will make a difference.

Source: Reuters

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