Monday, November 24, 2008

My new Touch Screen Phone

I recently started using a new touch screen phone, the Samsung i900 Omnia. I told myself that this is an experiment of how new phones will work, and seeing that I am in the phone application business, had to get one to use myself. (I am not an Apple-person, so the iPhone would not have done it for me).

As with all modern phones the Omnia comes with everything: GPS, FM radio, MP3 player, 5Mpixel camera, Card recognition, support for PowerPoint, Excel and Word... you name it. Ordinary e-mail or Push e-mail either delivered via WiFi or full HSDPA 3G, all of this packed into a phone smaller than my previous Sony Ericsson. And it can do Mobile banking too. The existing Fundamo application for Mobile Money runs seamlessly - even better than on the older phones.

One thing is clear. Consumers will be confronted by so many features and functions on modern phones that mobile banking/payments will definitely be lost in all the noise. Unless mobile banking is used frequently, the average consumer would not know where to find the functionality. As developers of mobile banking applications, we will have to think carefully how we make mobile banking part of the modern cellphone users life. I believe that this is only possible if we use more "push" functionality and integrate mobile payments with more and more of the applications.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Completely agree !! Marketing without integration will be a huge challenge in the future