While many of the solutions on display at CTIA in Las Vegas were recycled from Mobile World Congress 2009 – and therefore quite familiar to us at Fjord – a couple of launches caught our attention.
As predicted in our 2009 Mobile Trends many Telecom players are racing to create app stores, following the lead established by Apple. Among them are Nokia, Microsoft, Google (for Android), and Palm. At CTIA RIM joined the app store race, by launching its App World offering. The aspects of RIM’s App World that impress are a nice design and user experience, a pretty good integration with the App World web site where selections can be made, compatibility with most recent devices, and easy payment via PayPal (with payment via the phone bill being added later). The areas where it needs to play catch up are in the application range, and in app pricing. Less than 1,000 apps are available for RIM users compared to Apple’s more than 25,000. While some RIM apps are free, the price for many are $3 and rise from there. Apple’s paid-for apps start at 99 cents. However, the App World is a solid new offering from RIM, and an important component in the company’s successful push from the corporate to the consumer segment.
The other launch that caught our attention was LG’s GD900 device. The unique feature of the GD900 is the transparent keypad that doubles up as a touchpad that controls the screen interface. The touchpad can be used to control the elements on the touch-sensitive screen, and also for other functions such as finger-writing recognition and haptic feedback. The user can choose to use the screen itself for manipulating everything on the screen, and the touchpad only for number or text input. Or the user can choose to only use the touchpad, thereby limiting the distance the finger needs to travel on the device, and keeping all elements of the screen visible all the time (no fingers blocking out the screen elements). The touchpad is very sensitive to touch, and the haptic feedback is useful. The core idea behind the touchpad is very promising. However, the integration between the touch-sensitive screen and the touchpad is far from optimal. There is little consistency between views, and gestures that create the desired reaction in one view create no reaction in another view. LG are bringing something very interesting and innovative to the market with the GD900, but a lot of hard work and simplification is still needed before the promising touchpad experience has potential for mass-market breakthrough.
Twitter
YouTube
Vimeo
Slideshare
Linkedin