What do your customers want? Make sure you ask them before you make assumptions. Look at this and its implications:
BC Capital Markets just ran two surveys, one of “mobility experts” who were attending its recent Mobility Evolution Conference, and one of mobile consumers, with alarming results. The “experts” clearly believed that consumers want video products for their mobile phones (63%), and overwhelmingly believed that consumers would tolerate advertising on their phones (72% ). Unfortunately, the same questions elicited quite different results from users, where only 23% expressed any interest in watching video on their mobile phones, and just 20% said they would tolerate cell phone advertising, and that’s only if it lowered their costs. The telecom industry has a long tradition of cluelessness with regard to what its customers really want (metered ISDN, WAP, walled garden portals…), so this really shouldn’t come as a big surprise.