There is a risk when talking about media and mobile phones to forget their most useful function. On my HTC Touch Dual, one might consider that to be Ballbreaker, the hopelessly addictive game that comes as standard.
But, there is also of course the ability to call someone. Certain people might also suggest texting since, though it can take them half an hour to type an SMS message, they rightly argue that’s still a shorter time than it would have taken if they’d called the person in question. Answers on a postcard please if you can guess the certain people we're talking about. So, let’s call the phone’s most useful asset the ability to communicate instantly with a real person.
This was brought to mind by a new survey in the US examining whether – and how – people used their mobile phones in shops. It found that 24% of people who said they had used their mobile phones while shopping, did so to compare product prices using the mobile web, while 15% said they used the same function to look at product reviews.
But, before we get carried away with such things, let’s bear in mind that only 29% of the 9,000 people surveyed said they used their phones at all. And 72% of those who did said they used it to call someone (most commonly a significant other I’ll wager) about the purchase.
This is first a reality check on the scope of the mobile phone to change our lives. Just like the web and all successful technologies, mobiles will be at their most disruptive in enabling us to do things we always did better, not in changing the things we do.
Second, it points us to the kinds of services that will succeed most. Let’s be frank, looking at advertising is rarely something we choose to do. Instead, ‘advertisers’ have to look at what they can offer or support that empowers mobile users to do the things they already do. For that reason, Google Maps is in my view the single best mobile application available, since it helps me get where I’m going and - clearly - when I'm mobile, I'm going somewhere.
Last it tells us that, as a default, we do still like to call someone. Once you’ve done your search, Google Maps often has the phone number of the location you’re headed for easily to hand and I’m almost always reliant on a real person to guide me the last few yards. So, let a phone call be your default call-to-action on any mobile ‘push’. In my opinion, it’s what - ultimately – a mobile phone is for.
