Nice Mobile Services do not Fly. Observations of Mobile Services and the Finnish Consumers

When the short message service (SMS), was first initiated in 1992 nobody could foresee its tremendous popularity. Simple in design, easy to adapt and effortless to employ it rapidly became a profitable, matchless, globally used mobile service – referred to as a “killer application”. Ever since the quest for the next mobile service “killer application” has continued. Year after year the mobile service market(s) produce(s) new services and applications that due to complexity or lack of relevance fail to meet the consumers’ expectations. In this paper we will discuss three mobile services that commonly have been described as promising and innovative: mobile games, mobile television and snapshots with mobile phones, in an attempt to understand their potential for becoming successful services. We will study the Finnish mobile services market from two different viewpoints: on the one hand what Finnish experts and professionals on mobile commerce think the consumers want, and on the other hand, what the consumers actually use and will use in the future. In his way we will show some identifiable reasons for the discrepancies between mobile services offered and mobile services actually used. The analysis is based on our 2004-5 consumer surveys of mobile services combined with some insights from our 2004-5 Finnish expert studies on mobile commerce.