But in addition to an extra full QWERTY keyboard the device also features what Motorola calls ‘BactTrack Nav”. This is a touchpad on the reverse side of the touchscreen. Why would I use this feature over the touchscreen? I fail to come-up with a single use-case where this track pad would offer benefit over the touchscreen or keypad. Does the user really need three input mechanisms? I’m guessing not.

But the Backflip was nothing compared to Docomo’s separable phone. At first glance the handset looks like a slightly overweight slider (think Nokia Communicator circa early part of the decade). However the display can be completely detached from the QWERTY keypad to act as a normal touchscreen phone, and can be connected to the keypad via Bluetooth for remote operation (ie: the keyboard acts as a remote control for content, photographs etc). Again, so far so good, but then the stand staff slid out a further numerical keypad from underneath the QWERTY keyboard. No wonder the thing was so bulky. A touchscreen, QWERTY and numerical keypad. 

In both cases, are there really valid use cases or are these just an exercise in engineering prowess and a chance to expose potentially licensable technologies to the market?

I had to Google this just to double-check it wasn’t some elaborate hoax!

Perhaps not the greatest application of the technology (what happens when I cross the road and look left and right?) but as a technology for the physically impaired the science behind the positive / negative charge of retinas and corneas is far reaching.

The award for rooting me to the spot in utter fascination for more than five minutes therefore goes to Docomo!

It’s no big surprise that Microsoft used Mobile World Congress to launch the latest iteration of its smartphone OS, Windows Phone 7. What was surprising was the extent of the changes and the noticeable buzz that propagated around the Microsoft stand as hundreds of congress-goers watched a live webcast from Steve Ballmer. 

Three years ago I watched Microsoft launch Windows Mobile 6 (almost standing in the same spot). It was an evolution, nothing more. “Oh look, they’ve changed the fonts and colors.” You really had to question its long-term survival. Today’s announcement felt like the Redmond giant had finally found its voice and, despite the increased competition, had created something that felt fresh, differentiated and somewhat desirable. Make no mistake; this is a completely new OS, accompanied by a new brand and visual architecture.

Recognizing that smartphone growth is now being driven by consumers and not enterprise user, the Windows Phone 7 interface is built around a series of ‘live tiles’ (or super widgets as Joe Belfiore, VP Windows Phone, described them). These tiles pull in content from the user’s social networks and the web. The interface looks clean, structured and a welcome difference from the often-cluttered, widget-rich interfaces that seem to have proliferated over the last 12 months.

Maintaining a balance between consumer services and office applications, the OS has a series of hubs (people, pictures, games, office, music and marketplace ). For example, the people hub aggregates social networking status updates, messages, contact data etc; the music hub integrates music and video from the user’s PC and third party service providers etc.

Importantly, Microsoft will be specifying key hardware requirements to the OEM community. For example, all handsets must be multitouch and will require a dedicated hardware button to the Bing search engine. It seems that Microsoft wants to echo the close relationship that the OHA has forged with the OEMs and the consistency of hardware design applied to Android devices. The OS is fundamental to the user experience so ensuring a quality of service through closer hardware management and control seems to make sense. Where Microsoft may struggle is in the decision to lock the interface to the ‘tiles’. Competing OSs (including Android) allow the network carrier to personalise the interface to a far greater extent. This is, and always has been, an attractive benefit to carriers who like to deliver a consistent brand and experience across their installed base of devices.

Availability isn’t expected until Q4 2010, but Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC Corp., HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Toshiba have all committed to including Windows Phone 7 Series in their portfolio plans.

I’ll be heading to the Microsoft stand tomorrow for a closer look.

This puts the industry in a difficult position. Having spent considerable effort raising consumer awareness around data, many networks have hinted at the need to try and curb traffic by educating consumers about their data consumption. In particular the handful of ‘power-users’ that account for the vast majority of traffic.

Strategies for managing this problem range from the sensible, if not challenging, to the down-right absurd. Several operators have already come in for criticism after discretely rewriting the rule-book and restricting their unlimited data plans to the disadvantage of paying consumers. A good example is the additional charge now being placed on consumers who wish to tether their phones to a laptop to create a remote modem, even if they have an unlimited data plan. Cries of ‘double-dipping’ have rung loud.

Most likely, the year ahead will see the introduction of some innovative pricing models, such as tiered pricing with consumers charged in bands depending on their usage. We will also see policies to restrict file sharing and streaming media applications and technologies to offload non-core data traffic through WiFi networks.

One of the main concerns lies with how the technology handles voice. In the long-term, the goal is that voice will be carried as VoIP through IMS (IP Multimedia Substream). However, in the short-term there’s a patch-work of workarounds being debated, the most favoured being Circuit Switch Fallback. This simply means that the handset will ‘fallback’ to a 3G network if a user wants to make a call; but this has latency issues and may threaten the stability of a data application that’s open and connected to the LTE network.

Importantly, support for LTE within handsets is likely to begin with the smartphone segment. This exposes valuable enterprise users and early-adopters to a potentially questionable user experience. Such devices are also built to multi-task. Will tasks that require a consistent IP connection to the cloud tolerate a fallback / radio handover?  For all of the infrastructure deals that are announced and the huge investment being made by operators, surprisingly little attention seems to be given to the potential burden on customer care and the user experience.

One of the main concerns lies with how the technology handles voice. In the long-term, the goal is that voice will be carried as VoIP through IMS (IP Multimedia Substream). However, in the short-term there’s a patch-work of workarounds being debated, the most favoured being Circuit Switch Fallback. This simply means that the handset will ‘fallback’ to a 3G network if a user wants to make a call; but this has latency issues and may threaten the stability of a data application that’s open and connected to the LTE network.

Importantly, support for LTE within handsets is likely to begin with the smartphone segment. This exposes valuable enterprise users and early-adopters to a potentially questionable user experience. Such devices are also built to multi-task. Will tasks that require a consistent IP connection to the cloud tolerate a fallback / radio handover?  For all of the infrastructure deals that are announced and the huge investment being made by operators, surprisingly little attention seems to be given to the potential burden on customer care and the user experience.

But with so much fragmentation is it possible that a consumer is confronted with multiple app stores; with offers from the handset brand, platform and mobile operator on a single device? This would surely throw the user experience into complete turmoil as consumers try to navigate thousands of seemingly similar apps that perform near-identical tasks?

Also, mobile operators, who feel they may be well placed to leverage the consumer appetite for apps thanks to their brand recognition and billing relationship, may find their strategies in conflict with their device ranging decisions. The service-orientated platform of the smartphone tightly controls the experience and the services presented to the user. Paradoxically it is the out-of-fashion, lower-end devices that will allow greater operator control through customized interfaces and service management.

Within a smart pipe model, the operator adds value by acting as a broker between third-party service providers and the consumer. Infrastructure is engineered to allow third parties better access to both network and consumer behaviour through the provision of open network APIs, policy management and OSS/BSS platforms, for example.

Realizing the brand-pull of services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Voice, operators who adopt a smart pipe strategy will be able to retain control over the services delivered over their networks while offloading the burden of service development. Importantly this will ensure operators are able to maintain quality of service. Vodafone’s 360 strategy is one such move towards a more open and intelligent ecosystem.

How readily the rest of the industry will subscribe to this model is to be decided.

Smartphones are no longer just for enterprise users or early-adopters. For the Facebook generation who expect, and are expected, to be connected at all times they have become a necessity. Even RIM, the road warrior’s OEM of choice, has spent millions of advertising dollars convincing Joe Public that they need to stay connected with a BlackBerry.

Spurring further growth, 2010 will see price-drops as both manufacturers and carriers drive open platforms such as Android and Symbian. This will move smartphones into the $100-$150 dollar price bracket; the traditional home of the feature phone.

A key challenge, however, will be the mobile operators’ ability to protect its smartphone investments through better consumer education and support channels. Heavily subsidized, a smartphone that’s limited to just voice and text becomes just an expensive paperweight. Other users may struggle to navigate unfamiliar, complex operating systems; this may over-burden support channels, adding unnecessary cost and damaging subscriber profitability.

However, are traditional outsourcing strategies really working? Transactional cost savings may have been achieved, but the mobile industry continues to score poorly on customer satisfaction and loyalty against its peers.

Why? Because the nature of today’s outsourced and divergent mobile ecosystem has forced the mobile user experience to fragment, and it’s here that the battle for loyalty and profitability will ultimately be won or lost. By operating siloed outsourced contracts that deliver one-time only departmental savings, the industry is not able to achieve continual cost improvement, nor is it able to shift its attention to the cause of subscriber dissatisfaction and churn.

Outsourcing need to mature and address this.