Reading David Pogue’s review of the T-Mobile Shadow made me wonder why the mobile phone industry appears to be so incapable of releasing dismal products. The reasons are plentiful, but here are some obvious ones:

1. Consumers don’t know or care

One of the problems is that consumers don’t know or care what to expect. Take this example: my four year old Motorola phone uses fundamentally the same software as my friend’s new Motorola RAZR phone. The only difference is that the logos are more colourful and animated. The user interface is still dire and the metallic keypad make it difficult to read in strong light. Then there’s Java. On mobile devices this means “write once test everywhere.” Nevertheless, these phones get purchased.

2. Consumers are attracted to shiny objects

Leading on from the above point. Apple knows this as do the majority of mobile phone companies. First impressions count mightily and in the case of phones, it’s what they look like. Never mind if they can’t be used. Most consumers don’t recognise usability anyway – otherwise 90% of the world wouldn’t be using Windows. Snag a customer by a cute or sexy looking piece of kit and the usability doesn’t count. Or rather, it doesn’t count if you can lock the customer into a contract – because that’s where the money is made.

Beyond this impression, it appears that choices are governed by lists of features. This is another admission that phones are generally unusable.

It’s no coincidence that the first set of advertisements for the iPhone actually showed it being used. This was a first for any kind of mobile device. Once you see these advertisements you realise that it’s the obvious way to promote and distinguish such a device.

3. Mobile phone companies don’t value phones

Contract services with expensive ‘get out’ clauses are an admission that the product you sell is rubbish. Mobile phone companies know this: this is why you’ll frequently find that you can get a phone for free, mere months after it was first offered for sale.

The physical object: the phone – beyond its initial shinyness – is without value. There is therefore no incentive to improve it, other than satisfying demand 2 above. Make it more shiny and visually desirable, then stick some crap software on it. Don’t believe this? See GigaOM’s review of the Nokia N81. Ask yourself too why the HTC Touch needs a veneer of extra software to run on top of Windows Mobile 6.

Will the Open Handset Alliance help?

The mere existence of this group admits that the current mobile device experience is poor and that no one company seems capable or inclined to re-visualise what customers need (note: this isn’t what they want). Throwing more companies at the problem won’t resolve this fundamental issue, and as I read elsewhere Google only give things away for free that they don’t sell. The Apache v2 license doesn’t oblige contributors to fold their work back into the code base, so it’s likely that fragmentation will occur.

Then there’s the inevitable conflict between phone makers and the networks. For example, Nokia (not part of the OHA) has its own music service but this doesn’t run on Orange’s network, because they have their own music service. The OHA will allow both device makers and mobile phone networks to pick and choose what runs on which device and which network. So no change there either.

I’d like to think that a project like OpenMoko would work. OpenMoko seems to hark back to the early days of personal computing: hobby projects with dedicated (committed) developers. From what I’ve seen of this however, it’s merely reinventing the wheel in an open source environment. I don’t care whether something is open or closed source so long as it’s remarkable. Nothing I’ve seen in twenty years of mobile phone development comes close to remarkable except one product: the iPhone. Something not developed by a mobile phone company.