Mobile tech: the less friction, the more customer adoption
Bob Russell at MobileRead shares an insightful post on "friction" in the eBook market. The premise actually comes from Michael Hyatt, a book publisher, as he discusses what "friction" is. You could equate the term to a barrier of mass adoption or unnecessary roadblocks towards using a product. For eBooks, the friction lies in lack of available content, varying formats, DRM struggles and more. It simply doesn’t matter that an eBook may cost less or can be carried around easily in a digital format: with too much "friction", the general public won’t adopt the market.
Bob also raises this issue in the UMPC and smartphone markets, citing all of the friction that abounds. We’ve covered much of that here so I won’t rehash. But as I read the article (and the over 180 comments to Bob’s post), the first company that came to mind as a "friction reducer" was Apple. The products are simple to use while providing most of the functionality that most people need. No, the products aren’t perfect, but take a second to compare a MacBook with a notebook PC or the iPhone with a smartphone and think about which has more "friction". Or if you don’t agree with my premise, pick another company and make comparisons to its competitors. I think we’re at a point now where the most functionality isn’t going to win consumers over; less friction will. Thoughts?
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I agree; our GlucoMON device is all about reducing friction. It just works. That makes the difference between getting data automatically, or not getting data at all. http://www.diabetech.net
The Foleo comes to mind. Damn I guess palm had it right all along. Only time would tell how well it would do, but since I owe every type of major device out there (laptops, umpcs, pdas, smartphones) and some how I always keep going back to a simple design of the compaq aero 8000, Nec Mobilepro 800, Vadem Clio 1050, and Jornada 820, for simple web browsing and documents. When I carry my umpcs and smarphones everyone around me always goes like wow that awesome, but when they use the devices they end up not liking them because of how much effort it takes to do simple things. Lesson lets learned lets keep an open mind to the foleo it might not be right for many of us, but it would be good for 95% of the population out there.
My wife bought me a 3rd gen iPod, once charged, all software installed, and music loaded, did not need the instructions much to control the iPod.
Years later I bought my wife the Microsoft Zune, and after I primed it up for and started going thru the controls and on screen menu I used the phrase “what the h@##?”.
I’ve upgraded my iPod battery and will use it until it dies. Whenever I finally get back into a more healthier lifestyle & attitude, my iPod with over 4,000 songs on it will work fine during work outs and jogging. Currently setting up my OQO 02 iTunes to be my iPod’s home base.
Apple definitely sets the bar, if you ever saw Microsoft’s pre-cursor to Windows you know what I mean, without the Mac OS, Windows would not be where it is today. Only wish the Next computer & NextStep OS was successful back then.
MobiPocket seems pretty “frictionless” to me on my desktop and Windows Mobile 6 device. Attach, hit Sync and it syncs.
As does using Windows Media Player to transfer my muisc and playlists to my device.
Drag and drop to create playlist, attach device, hit sync, right click to move playlist to Sync folder, click sync, it syncs.
Seems pretty simple to me.
Kevin: this is exactly why I bought my iPod, and while I’ve not had nearly the time I would like getting acquainted with the iMac I bought several months ago, that has to date been my experience for the most part with it as well (after a lot of years with MS equipment). I agree completely.
Unfortunately, Palm started out frictionless and has since added friction. Using a LifeDrive even with a CompactFlash in place of the MicroDrive is not the experience I hoped it would be.