Blyk's missing the point about mobile apps

Blyk is an ad-supported free MVNO targeted at the 16-24 set. Antti Ohrling, Blyk's founder recently made a few remarks at the MediaGuardian Changing Advertising summit that make me wonder if Blyk's completely misunderstood mobile data and application services.

First he mentions studies that show not many people are using many mobile applications. Yup. Dead on. But why is it that everyone who points to these silly surveys always says "nobody uses mobile services, ergo, nobody wants to use them." Ick. Mistake the first.

Let's set the record straight: people don't use mobile services because, they generally suck!

That's right... name 10 great mobile applications. Hmm... BlackBerry mail... Google Maps... umm... well... er... hmmmm...

I'm exaggerating of course, but my point is that people aren't using mobile because there aren't a lot of great apps for it. We've seen that people pay for a lot of services that they do find value in (the billions of dollars spent on mobile eMail, games, ringtones, and MMS prove this).

Why are applications so bad? Because they're so hard to build. That's a problem that we're going to be solving at planQ, but we'll talk about that another day.

Where else does Blyk seem to miss the point?

Ohrling is quoted as saying "Mobile is a push medium, you call someone they call you, you text someone they text you."

Yup, remember when we used our computers to write documents, and email them to one another? The PCs at our desks weren't used to consume passive applications and content ... but the apps got better, and the web got richer, and we started to do more and more with the PC.

I don't mean to pick on Blyk, but it's strange that so many people seem to suggest that the lack of uptake in mobile apps is tied to some inexplicable and fundamental property of mobile. That's an awfully complicated non-answer.

The easier answer is : mobile apps tend to suck. People will use them... when they're better. Much better.