What drives mobile app design?

It is important to understand the proliferation of different kinds of cellular phone standards, handsets and hardware parameters that affect the compatibility of various applications across various demographics. Various applications specifically for the mobile phone market that are gaining ground include the traditional mass markets of mobile banking, gaming and location-based services.

Furthermore, the success of such technologies as VoIP has, in effect, validated the push towards 4G networks, with a predominantly IP backbone. In addition to this, the least common denominator when it comes to features, even in low-cost handsets, is pretty exhaustive, thereby enabling various new applications.

The earliest version of mobile phones

The earliest version of mobile phones was the two-way radio, primarily used to communicate on set frequencies, not utilising the telephone network. Between 1910 and 1973, the technology saw several steps in its evolution. In 1973, Motorola demonstrated the DynaTAC prototype, which was probably the first commercial version of what is today smaller and lighter by several orders of magnitude. These were still analog devices and the introduction of the 2G standard, which was the term used for TDMA and CDMA systems, came about in the 1990s, to introduce digital, circuit switched transmission. The phones in this generation still weighed about 200 gm at their lightest and saw the introduction of several commercial services such as the short message service (SMS), downloadable ring tones and roaming.

Although the proliferation of mobile phone technology has far exceeded expectations, the data-rates on circuit-switched digital networks have not scaled as well. While the main driver for 2G networks was voice, newer applications such as video and digital television are predicted to be the drivers of what has been termed 4G networks, as the limits of short-range communication evolve.

While network technology progressed in supporting higher data rates and more features, one of the greatest leaps in subscriber base occurred when the Asian continents started to engage with mobile phones. Given that the population density in this part of the world is unparalleled, two driving factors determined the success of both handsets and network technology, first movers and price.

Even though GSM was adopted early in India and China, the handset prices drove the subscriber base, in the initial years. There were many reviews that brought out the fact that even though 2.5G and 3G services were available to subscribers, the price of the handset forced them to choose 2G phones, thereby rendering a lot of the services redundant. Pricing services based on customer requirements has bridged this gap and instruments are more capable, even at the lowest prices, in the current market.

The handsets include price

Features of the handsets include price, memory, image-resolution and ability to connect to the Internet. In profiling these parameters for 42 handsets from the leading brands, based on various price-points, it is observed that the most basic handset still has a camera and is Internet-ready. The price-points and concerns about majority of subscribers in the Asian countries using 2G instruments by reason of price are slowly being bridged. It would be interesting and relevant to perform a fine-grained analysis on how the predictions by the GSM committee and studies on spectrum provisioning translate to the Indian market.