By Ron Coates, 1 April 2004 17:50
NEWS Even sophisticated users are having difficulties setting up and using their smart phones and operators' helplines aren't that helpful, according to focus group results from mobile software specialist Intuwave.
Richard Seward of Intuwave said: "The key faults are that the main functions - GPRS, MMS and email - aren't working properly in the out-of-the-box handsets and that the operators' customer support is cumbersome at best and not necessarily much help."
Robin Duke-Woolley, director of technology consultant E-principles, agrees: "There's a culture shock – a lot of new features and it's not too obvious how to access them.
"It's like the early days of PCs, a fun thing to have and early users enjoyed setting them up and knew how to use them – but lots of people don't have the time or inclination to go through the documentation."
They may be hard to use but they're flying off the shelves - earlier this year researcher Canalys reported that two million smart phones were sold in the last quarter of last year, double the number of PDAs.
And very few of them have been integrated into full use in the business sense - of people using them for emails, web browsing, getting data from the office computers and so on, according to Jessica Figueras, Ovum's practice leader for telecoms and IT.
"Most use them as I do, for making calls, keeping my diary, some text messages – but not much emails or using it as a company tool. We did a survey early this year and were astounded at how few were being used in the enterprise," she said.
"Very few companies have a strategy – I think that the IT managers are just closing their eyes to all the smartphones out there. And it is certain that some operators are having difficulty stretching their customer support to cover smart phones."
Andrew Yuille, marketing director of an IT company and part of a focus group, would agree. When he hit a problem the customer support person said that he'd have to email a technical support department. That then relayed instructions back through customer support in a process that took days. It eventually took a month to resolve his problem.
Figueras believes that the operators will have to become more proactive to make sure that the phones are properly set up before they are sold, as does Duke-Wooley and, of course, Intuwave.
Comments
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1. Geoff
Couldnt agree more - Orange in UK are flummoxed by the Treo600. Best help is from discussion boards such as www.treocentral.com Was even thinking of setting up a workshop for folks who have them.
2. Rob
It's not just the customers that don't know how to use them, it seems that no mobile company knows how to use them, resulting in poor implementation of updates. Internal testing for these updates is below poor, it's pathetic and will result in damaging the smartphone market as people switch to different handsets because of the faulty software from the mobile company and in some cases poor build quality as well.
3. Peter Lewis
The Blackberry might be the rule-proving exception here. Sure it's very proprietary, but it has been selling extremely well in North America, and to a lesser extent in Europe. It integrates extremely well into the corporate Outlook/Exchange environment, and does Domino also.
In my large organization, our top management team use them as well as some of us in the 'engine-room'. Yes, it needs some support, but what doesn't? Overall, the user experience with these little beasts is very positive and I would thoroughly recommend people to give them a look.
4. Adnan
No body seems to know what is going on....as Geoff above states the best mode of help is forum groups. I have especially found that www.coolsmart.com is fantastic.
Another related point, Orange allowing its users to TRY things out for free, the first month. Well I was offered this opportunity to try out Orange World Free. I was allowed to send video message! MMS and certain amount of data. All the MMS that I have sent have not arrived at their destination despite having a confirmation receipt of delivery from Orange, have not been able to send a single Video message! and the WAP sites using most data (GPRS) are the Orange home and Orange MY Page!!!!
TRY something for free.....well one would if the service worked!!!!!!!!1
5. Mark SPLINTER
Design education has been rubbish for at least 15 years. Now we are starting to see the effects of that total lack of investment. Good design improves everything, and yet is sidelined as a luxury or an "arty thing" that should be curbed to increase efficiency.
I am not talking about jet engine design or bridges across the fjords or whatever, I am talking about day-to day consumer items which mysteriously don't sell.
Style has taken the place of design, and we all know, style is nothing but froth and marketing spin.
Maths and Physics have got us nowhere, the three Rs don't even begin with R, it's time to give Design, Art and Music a turn at the top and see how much our lives improve. It is already clearly shown that slashing music lessons was one of the worst ideas ever, and behaviour at school gets worse and worse while all we teach is the dry boring facts of academia.
We could carry on welding ears to mice and growing the perfect soldier in a tube, but i think there's probably a better way to live together and progress.
6. roy
this so easy to sum up in a nutshell! users can use a pc because you just point the mouse and the pc does what its asked.it even shows you how to set up an email acount ie; hotmail. smart phones dont do this. this is why xda phones i personaly find easier.tap the email icon with the stylus(provideing it uses windows wich is easy to use) and bingo up comes the email system. if you can use windows you can operate a phone that uses the same system. a lot of thse smartphones are just a status symbol to the general public.they simply dont understand how they work. give some one a WAP phone thats never used one before and ask them to set up the system for emails etc etc and i can tell you they will still be confused an hour later. make the phone look like a desktop and have the setup explain it to you as you are setting it up(like windows xp) and the same person will be up and running in minutes! my child can use a pc easily but i gave him my wap phone and my smartphone with the instructions and he got that frustrated he gave up.(hes 15 by the way).as for the nutshell solution; THE GENERAL PUBLIC CANT UNDERSTAND THEM!MAKE THEM EASIER! FULL STOP!
7. Andy Hough
sluggish and painfull to use - just like Windows 2.0 - if you remember that!! But wander around MS at Thames Valley Park and they are there in abundance - hang on, isn't that a wav of Hawaii-5-0 playing on my smartphone - cool!!!! Love it or hate it, I wouldn't be without it (unless you couldn't unlock it of course!!)
8. David Love
It's not just the operators who need to get their act together. Ever seen a User Manual for a Nokia 6600? Straight out of the mid 90's.
And did Nokia have the Mail, WAP and MMS settings available at launch? No, early users had to work them out for themselves. Thank God for the newsgroups out there.
I could go on. There's much to do, for operators, mfrs and retailers alike.
9. anonymous
I have recently ugraded to an Orange E200 SPV after having used separate PDA's and mobiles for many years. I find that I am more knowledgeable than the staff answering the phone, which is a definate worry! Having gone through the interminable list of options at the call centre (another story) and as soon as you do get to speak to someone (which you have to do because there are no options for data access issues) and mention proxy server settings and internet browsing you can practically smell the fear on the other end of the line. Orange for example does not publish its help number for data access support - it is 156 by the way from an Orange mobile. Still if you persevere the results are cool, though I've had to ugrade the OS already and the device is only 1 month old. It certainly does take me back to the early days of the PC. Definately a consulkting opportunity and massive cost to business emerging from this one!
10. James
SMART is a misnomer!
The users, customer support, ISPs, OEMs are all in the same boat. The meaning of SMART got lost somewhere along the development road – bit like the uncommented source code syndrome in the good old days...