Many analysts and bloggers recently started to ask whemselves about which “killer application” will push mobile data services into the mass market. As Mike Mace already pointed out, wireless email won’t cut it - and IMHO, T-Mobile’s expensive Web N Walk campaign doesnt offer too compelling stuff either.

In order to understand today’s point, we need to look back in history. In fact, we need to revisit the days of the Palm Vii - pager networks like Mobitex were the best thing on the market, and their transmission speeds of barely 9600bps(+/- 50% for all accuracy manacs) allowed for nothing but basic text data transfer.

Eventually, technologies like GPRS became available - however, their adoption was slowed down by the high initial pricing(in fact, many german users kept on using CSD many years after the GPRS introduction for financial reasons). Add in UMTS or EDGE, and also the lower prices, and you now have wireless data transfer systems that are capable to handle Skype and Shoutcast streams.

People love radio because of a simple reason: it always is available, and it provides you with “no-frills” music. You just tune into a station and have fun… . At least, thats the ideal imagination. In reality, radio has a few shortcomings:

  • You can’t choose what songs you get
  • Transmission quality is instable

Now, if a provider could bundle up something like Napster’s music flatrate with an “unlimited” data transfer package and a decent shoutcast player on a mobile phone, they could essentially offer ‘custom radio’ to their customers. If the whole thingy is attractively priced, it could give both ‘hdd based’ MP3 players and radio stations a run for their money - after all, they can’t suddenly change style(radio stations) or add that new DJ Shadow song on the fly(MP3 player).

A bit of advertising(what about recycling some of your Web N Walk cash, T-Mobile) and a few cheap end devices - reach the critical mass, and the cash is rolling(IMHO).

What do you think?