Mobile Industry: Think Easy Peasy

(Article first published as Today's Mobile Industry: Think Easy Peasy on Technorati) Some unsolicited advice to the mobile industry in the hours before another direction-setting CTIA conference begins. Ladies and gentlemen, every day when you come to your desks, whiteboards and assembly lines, think of just two words: Easy peasy. For those who need four, how about easy peasy lemon squeezie? Huh, you say? How about we rally around the children’s rhyme to stop the insanity of metered data plans, crazy distribution points and even crazier product line introductions? Specifically, in recent days, Verizon indicated that it is moving to tiered data pricing, following AT&T’s lead in the U.S. Has anyone stopped to think that text messaging became a mass activity (72% of all American subscribers) and super easy (if not easy peasy) when unlimited plans were produced? Now we’re going to ask mobile subscribers to count “MBs” and “GBs.” Yeah, yeah...you can go to a web site or send a text and get an update, but who has the time or interest to do that? As for head-scratching distribution points, $99 netbooks flew off the shelves of retailer CVS. Wonderful, you say? Awful, I say. How can we possibly provide satisfying customer experiences when we offer low-end, less intuitive products at a drugstore? Pass the antacid. And about those wacky product lines? The other day, Dell said that it will release a “whole slew” of devices – 3, 4, 7, 10 inchers. Hopefully, they will be available in drugstores so consumers won’t have to make a separate trip for an aspirin. Just how will a consumer know which model is best? As a colleague said to me, how about we ask them to buy the whole set?