How the Switch in Mobile Usage from Voice to Data Is Changing Inputs, Outcomes - and the Designs That Influence Them

Form follows function.

That hoary old chestnut has been around so long and seems so obvious that one would think its application to design of virtually everything has morphed from automatic to genetic. Think again.

As the tidal wave of mobile data usage swamps voice, every entity in the mobile food chain is rethinking the ways in which their particular application - from handsets to content - is applied, perceived, used and evaluated.

The results of this self-evaluation are not often laudatory. Among notable examples, it is being whispered that part of Facebook's monetization problem is the network's inability to successfully transfer and present advertising from computer to mobile. And they are not alone.

Retailers with online ambitions and web-based merchants both are finding that everything from screen size to the 'back-office' electronics driving the technology need to be rethought and re-created in order to optimize the potential that the medium offers.

It would be easy to say, in exasperation, 'what were they thinking?' but it is worth noting that perspective and context are difficult to achieve in the midst of a secular shift from one mode of operation to another. The proverbial bon mot about changing tires on a moving car comes to mind.

It is also fair to point out that this happened in the wake of a cataclysmic financial crisis which led to the worst recession in 80 years. In other words, budgets have been tight, fear of the future is rampant and caution about how to invest scarce resources has been manifest.

That said, it should now be apparent that inexpensive short-cuts to catch the wave are not going to work. Design, if done properly, takes research, testing and time. Impatience is the corporate norm these days and fear of missing the opportunity trumps the desire to get it right. All of which makes design - and harvesting the moment that much harder. Knowledge appears to be catching up with aspiration - but that wisdom may not have arrived quickly enough to save all who have grasped the lesson. Maybe they'll get it the next time. Or the next time after that. JL

Kevin Fitchard reports in GigaOm:

The switch from voice to data isn’t just affecting carriers. The new mobile data reality is driving device makers to change the way handsets are designed, Internet companies to deal with the smaller screen, and infrastructure makers to re-architect the fundamental topologies of their networks.
FreedomPop wants to create a social mobile-data network, where access is a secondary business consideration to services. GSM Nation plans to build a business around the idea that any customer should be able to pick any device, not just from a carrier’s limited portfolio. Republic Wireless is challenging the notion that mobile data plans can no longer be unlimited, tapping into a vast wealth of open Wi-Fi.

Three different carriers. Three completely different approaches to the market. The only thing they have in common — besides being part of the newest wave of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOS) — is that they are questioning long-accepted mobile business models. As mobile evolves from a carrier-dominated, vertically integrated and voice-centric industry into a more inclusive, data-focused one, they’re making the case that our fundamental notions of what a carrier is and what it provides should evolve as well.

But the transformation of the industry isn’t just limited to carriers. The switch from voice to data has led every link in the mobile value chain to question assumptions formed when the world used wireline networks for data and mobile networks for voice. Device makers have changed the way handsets are designed. Internet companies are grappling with the fact that their customers are moving away from the PC to small-screen devices, with their limited real estate and more challenging revenue models. And infrastructure makers and carriers are re-architecting the fundamental topologies of their networks.

We’re seeing examples of it all over the industry. Facebook’s IPO was clouded by the revelation that it had no idea how to port its advertising-based revenue model over to mobile phones. A growing number of developers are looking to mobile as their first and sometimes only platform. For a company like Foursquared the smartphone isn’t so much a telephony or a computing platform as it is an extension of its owner’s presence in the world. Path (whose CEO Dave Morin is also speaking at Mobilize) has discounted the PC completely, believing the future of social networking relies solely on mobile devices.

In handsets, device makers are grappling with new form factors and users interfaces as the phones original primary function, voice calls, falls to the wayside and the need to create a more immersive data experience comes to the forefront. New large-screened devices like Samsung’s Galaxy Note are blurring the distinction between smartphone and tablet, and my colleague Kevin Tofel believes that one day tablets will replace the smartphone entirely.

Nokia Siemens Networks’ conception of a heterogeneous network
On the network side, carriers and their infrastructure vendors have begun realizing that the big t0wer-based macro-umbrella networks that fueled two decades of voice services aren’t going to cut it in a data-centric world. They’re designing new types of small cells and base stations intended to deliver intense levels of bandwidth over limited areas. Those small cell deployments will eventually evolve into the new heterogeneous network, or HetNet, which will transform cellular systems from coverage-to capacity-focused topologies. Today’s carrier networks have tens of thousands of cells. Future networks will hundreds of thousands if not millions of cells.

The next few years are going to be tumultuous as we negotiate these seismic shifts from mobile voice to mobile data and from the PC-centric to the mobile-centric Internet. Not every MVNO, app developer and infrastructure maker is going to make it. We’ve already seen a big shakeup on the equipment side (Nokia decline and the dissolution of Motorola and Nortel Networks), and the big incumbent mobile operators are struggling to understand their role in the mobile broadband age.