Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’
Consumerisation
Why has “consumerisation” suddenly popped up as the buzzword for people using their personal equipment at work over the past year or so? Apart from senior staff who have been given Blackberrys for email access, lower level staff have been accessing their email, contacts and calendars using their personal phones for years now. This has been a small minority though for three main reasons:
Firstly most people bought their phones not expecting to be able to access any email, let alone work email. These devices were for making calls and sending text messages. Email was an afterthought.
Secondly, data connectivity on a phone has been expensive, so users are not willing to spend personal money for work purposes.
Thirdly, and I think most importantly, the user experience has been poor. Reading email on small screens where only 4 or 5 words fit across the screen is a lot of effort. Composing an email on a number pad using T9 predictive text or old school multitap takes a long time and is error prone. Immediate “push” email was impractical for battery life reasons. This is why Blackberry did so well, it was a device designed specifically for email.
So what has changed to dissolve away these issues? Whether you like it or not, Apple’s iPhone turned the smartphone industry on its head. User experience, not capability, was key.
Email on the iPhone was front and centre. The Mail app was on the homescreen by default. Mail was one of the key apps that was being highlighted by Apple in their adverts along with Web browsing and things like Visual Voicemail.
Because the iPhone had such a focus on data heavy applications, the networks had to respond with data friendly tariffs. Packages with unlimited data built in became the norm (although this has since changed as the networks have adjusted to match usage patterns). This made it seem “free” for the user to surf the web and get push email. Companies used to pay for internet connectivity for their staff from home for business recovery or working from home reasons, no one does this anymore since most have unlimited broadband packages.
This all builds to create a user experience that makes it easy and attractive for the user to use their phones, and now tablets, at work. They’ve realised that working with their email, contacts and calendars on their new phones is easier and even more “fun”. This is why the numbers of users wanting to use their devices for both work and play has increased dramatically over the past few years. This is why consumerisation has become such a positive trend, and in my opinion, it is doing companies a favour. Users now want to use their own devices and data packages, therefore decreasing costs.
iPhone 3GS
iPhone 3GS
Finally, after locking myself into an 18-Month contract with Vodafone on a stupid LG Viewty, I can get the iPhone 3GS.
Back when the original iPhone was announced, I said to myself, “I don’t need a phone, I just want a touchscreen iPod”. So when the iPod touch was announced, I bought that thing up, and I’ve been very very happy with it ever since. The only thing that I wasn’t so happy with, was that I couldn’t fit my whole 19GB song library within its 16GB capacity, and that many of the apps available are so much more useful if you have an always on connection instead of just WiFi.
Around the same time, my Sony Ericsson k800i died, so I ended up getting a new phone on a new contract. I coulda got an iPhone then, but I didn’t since “I don’t need a phone, i just want a touchscreen iPod”. What a mistake that was… I got an LG Viewty, what a piece of shit. The main selling points of that thing were the “touchscreen” and “5MP camera”. First, the touchscreen required so much effort to get working since it worked on pressure and not capacitence. Second, the 5MP cam took good pictures, right until it saves the pic to the memory and adds a lovely blur effect onto it making all pics look out of focus. How useful.
I lived with that thing for 13 months until the battery started to run out within half a day. So I put it on eBay and got around £70 for it which I was happy about. Since then, I’ve been using a Vodafone *cough*Sagem*cough* 527 pay as you go phone. Its nice and small, but the functions are crap, but I expected that from a phone that costs £30. My vodafone contract ran out in May, and ever since, I’ve been holding out until WWDC for Apple to announce the new iPhone.
Now its here… it looks the same as the iPhone 3G. It adds a few features that the 3G won’t have even with the iPhone OS 3.0 update such as video recording/editing, compass, better cam, voice control and better graphics. Now if I were an iPhone 3G owner, I don’t think these extra features would make me wanna upgrade. But since I’m a new user, hell yeah do I want it! At last, I’ll be able to sync all of my songs and videos, instead of a random subset of them. I’ll be able to use connected Apps wherever I am like all of those location based apps. I’ll be able to Twitter on the go (I’m getting bored of twitter… maybe this will invigorate my interest).
Bring on Friday 19th. I’ve been waiting for over 18 months. This better be as good as I’ve hoped.
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