A blue-ribbon panel of human behavior and technology experts at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain agreed that the best recent advance in the mobile telecommunications user space came not from a mobile telecom company but from Apple Inc. — the iPhone. Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing for Adobe, cited a study showing that 77 percent of iPhone purchasers described themselves as "very satisfied" with their user experience. In an ominous note for mobile operators, the iPhone respondents credited their happy experience not to AT&T, the channel through which iPhone services were delivered in the U.S, but to Apple, the device maker.

The panel, whose title was It's the User Experience, Stupid agreed that iPhone represents a model for mobile operators to follow, but they reached little agreement on how to follow. One direction, advocated by Lucia Predolin, international marketing and communications director for Buongirono S.p.A. of Milan, Italy, is to manipulate users by identifying their "need states" — including such compulsions as "killing time," and "making the most of it" — and fulfilling them subliminally. Adobe's Murarka proposed a more technological approach to improving the user experience, satisfying the mobile phone subscriber through better interface design. Sarah Lipman, co-founder and R&D director for Power2B, suggested an almost mystical solution, somehow tapping into users' "neural networks" to navigate a mobile phone interface "using touch and pre-touch input."

Panelists cautiously agreed that the current user experience — at least compared to the iPhone — is not very good. Predolin said that one problem is that many people are reluctant to tap the vast potential of mobile communications — especially the mobile Internet — because they fear the eventual cost. With so many telecom companies advertising heavily the cost of their services per minute, users hesitate to explore possibilities that might devour their precious minutes. Predolin said that this deadline consciousness is so strong among mobile users that they even constrained their consumption of minutes in a Buongiorno-sponsored trial in which participants were given mobile phones free for a week. "Operators are putting together cost plans that people can't understand," said Predolin. "It is not just cost but the way you market your cost."

Panelist Mike Yonker, general manager of worldwide strategy and operations for Texas Instruments' wireless terminals business unit, said that the way for the user to get the rich content now available on a mobile handset is through the "search" function. But this isn't so easy. He compared the limitations of a mobile handset to a full personal computer screen. Searching on a computer, he said, is like going to a store, where the customers sees every product displayed, and can make comparisons, touch the products, even try things on for size. Doing the same search on a mobile, he said, but like trying to shop in the same store but "through a drive-up window." No matter how much stuff is in the store, you can only find out through the cashier at the drive-up window. The dilemma, left unsolved by the panelists, was how to squeeze the user through that window, past the cashier, to sample all the things in the store, without guilt, while still feeling grateful to the cashier who seemed, all along, to be standing in the way. Everyone agreed that, so far, only Apple has been able to turn this trick. For users, "the content is the core," said Lipman of Power2B somewhat ruefully, "and we have to get out of their way."

The Mobile Broadcast Receiver is one of the more interesting gadgets we've bumped into at Mobile World Congress this week. It's basically a pocketable broadcast receiver that turns Wi-Fi-enabled phones and personal media players into mobile TVs. The Mobile Broadcast Receiver has been developed by Packet Video (PV) and we saw it in action on an iPod touch. Essentially, the PV hardware decodes a digital TV signal and repurposes it for use on the playback device. Apparently the receiver can tell what video codecs the playback device uses and adapt the stream accordingly - so it used QuickTime for the iPod touch, for example. And the quality was impressive, too.

Opening up mobile TV

Unfortunately, you can't get your hands on PV's Wi-Fi gizmo just yet. The product will be available later this year, but PV usually works with mobile operators rather than selling direct to consumers. PV wants to get operators on board as a way of selling the device – perhaps with their branding. Let's not underestimate the impact that this technology could have. Rather than replace your existing phone with a model that features dedicated mobile TV support, PV's technology can simply add-in the new functionality. It won't be the neatest solution. The device measures 6.4 cm wide by 1.8 cm high x 4 cm deep - about the size of a matchbox. But it will open up mobile TV access to devices that exist right now, like the N95, the iPhone, HTC Touch and so on. According to PV, the mobile broadcast receiver will be available in versions for all major mobile broadcast standards, including DVB-H and MediaFLO, as well as for WiMAX.

PV adds that the device is certainly compatible with the Nokia N series mobile phones, the Apple iPhone and HTC Smartphone devices and will work with many others (as long as there's Wi-Fi connectivity present). PV currently supplies the multimedia software that enables the Orange World service. Its software is used in more than 200 million devices worldwide, spanning more than 200 different models.