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According to research done by Mformation, all phone carriers need to do is hand out an iPhone or Palm Pre to every man women and child and we’ll get hooked on mobile data.  It seems a whopping 95% of US and UK folks would be more likely to try the mobile internet and mobile email if it were easier to do so.  We know the cell phone market is leveling off so as carriers look for new streams of revenue, this seems like a no-brainer.

95% of consumers surveyed indicated that they would be more likely to try new mobile services if setup was easier.

Today’s mobile internet

Grab a basic phone, say a popular Pantech Matrix from AT&T, and give it a whirl.  Now to be fair, I happen to have this phone laying around and its experience is quite typical (if not better than others I’ll discuss in a minute).  The Pantech uses its own OS and getting to the Internet is a chore.  If you know that Media Net is AT&T’s code name for the Internet, you are well on your way.  Assuming you made that hurdle, pulling up a webpage is painfully slow, even on this 3G connection.  Compared to my iPod Touch, it was a full 30 seconds slower in accessing the page.  But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

While waiting for the page to load, I fight off the battery-saving screen dim.  Yes, that setting is in the phone, but even as a phone junkie, I am far too lazy to switch it.  I don’t have this issue (typically) with my iPod.  So the page comes into view and I can’t do much with it.  I have to pan around using the d-pad to see things and trying to stitch together the screen in my head is just too taxing.

And let’s mention Windows Mobile at this point.  My corporate-issued phone features Internet Explorer that is so unhelpful, I’d rather build smoke signals to request data.  I never use it except to show folks just how bad it is.  It is embarrassing to me that I even have it installed.

All experiences are not created equal

Using an iPhone (or my touch) is virtually the same experience visually as using my desktop computer.  Sure the screen is a little smaller, but the experience is just the same: I don’t get lost on pages, I can zoom in and out with ease, in short it is a totally positive experience.  Getting to try out the Palm Pre, I had the same feelings about its great browser.

Show me the money

So why am I advocating handing out these in-demand devices?  Easy, get consumers hooked on service they want to sell.  The telecoms charge a crazy amount of mobile data service, in most cases doubling your monthly bill.  If 95% of the users try out these services, you’ll hook a good many of them on your pricey plans.  And liked the hooked fish we are, we can’t go back to phones that don’t offer these kind of experiences so we become high paying customers for life. 

This doesn’t seem hard to figure out.  If a simpleton like me gets it…

Read: [People don’t get data services]