UK consultancy Concise Insight believes that 2004 will be yet another disappointing year for the 3G market but that messaging and what it calls “premium text information services” will drive the value proposition to the point of wide adoption. They note that handset performance, including dreadful battery life, will hold down subscriber numbers in 2004 and early 2005, and the total number of cellular subscribers will cease to grow by 2006. According to CI, “3G needs to deliver the requisite bandwidth and functionality to drive down underlying input costs so that 3G tariffs and features can be offered to a mass market. This need for innovation will be particularly necessary in the handset market-place.” I still think that voice is the killer application for advanced cellular services, and that operators, regardless of market or platform, will continue to struggle to develop and sell data services beyond the simplest text services.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.