The Big Interview: Tomi Ahonen

For those of you that don’t know who Tomi Ahonen is, get out from under your rock!

Tomi T Ahonen is an author and independent consultant focusing on the mobile industry and digital convergence, at tomiahonen.com. Tomi is the father or co-inventor of several theories and management tools used by the industry which are referenced in 50 books by his peers. Previously employed as an executive with Nokia and three operators in Finland and the USA, today Tomi’s reference client list includes HP the biggest computer maker, Vodafone the biggest mobile operator group, Nokia the biggest handset maker, Intel the biggest chip maker, Ericsson the biggest telecoms network vendor and NTT DoCoMo the biggest mobile internet service provider. He is widely considered the ‘Godfather of Mobile’.

And Tomi has been ever so kind as to answer a few questions for Mobsessed.

• What has been the single greatest technological development in mobile in the past year?

For me, Augmented Reality on phones – the Layar AR browser in particular. Its opening a radical new opportunity to the mobile content and media space.

• What major development in mobile technology do you think will further revolutionise the industry in the next ten years?

Oh, I wish I knew. I can imagine some things that I know are in development, like 3D for example, and the general trends like miniaturization. What the phones really need more than anything else, is far more battery power – battery development has not kept at all pace with the rate of processing power and memory ability. I think the whole mobile industry will go through a gigantic ‘acceleration’ in innovation when we get relatively widespread acceptance of the mobile wallet. This is not a new idea and very advanced mobile payment and mobile wallet solutions already exist, such as in Japan and South Korea – but when it becomes commonplace for example in America that your pay check goes directly to your phone account and your car keys and home keys and loyalty cards and credit cards are all part of the phone – that will open a whole new range of services, where money can converge with media, with advertising etc. This is a trend we’ll see evolving this decade but its not really a new technical invention now, as its been around for decade already in some countries. Like in Kenya already today, 46% of all banking accounts are on mobile phones.

• What are your thoughts on the network infrastructure in the UK ? Which markets should we aspire to challenge for network speed and security?

The UK is a peculiar place. It has had competition for very long and most technologies have been deployed there usually at a very early stage. Yet it has strange deficiencies in the network. For example the London Tube – why on earth cannot we have full mobile coverage in the Tube? In far more difficult underground metro systems - like in Helsinki in Finland where the metro is dug 100 meters underground into solid granite bedrock (the subway system is also a bomb shelter for citizens of Helsinki, built to survive nuclear attacks) we have perfect cellular coverage. Consider the typical London underground situation. The train is so often delayed, or is so full during rush hour that several go by that you cannot even board the train, or it gets stuck on the tracks between stations. These are normal situations in London and the passengers would have a very compelling need to communicate that they are delayed. Yet they have no coverage. It is silly. In Finland the metro is so new and modest in scale and has so few problems with the transport system, and is not particularly congested, so there are very rarely delays-related reasons to communicate. But total, perfect cellular coverage everywhere.

Similarly broadband internet is quite disappointing in many parts of Britain. I live in Hong Kong and we are spoiled with 100 Mbit/s speeds. In South Korea every home gets 100 Mbit/s and their ‘high speed’ is now Gigabit speed broadband. But in Britain it seems (by recent advertisements that I’ve seen) that 20 megabits is somehow ‘fast’?? I think there is plenty the UK can do to gain more speed and connectivity. Did you notice Finland already made it every citizen’s legal right to have broadband…

• Being a man who has had many handsets, what has been the one you will always look back on with great fondness, and why?

Oh, my first Nokia Communicator and the N93. With both, when they were launched, there was a great deal of James Bond-esque mystique, where it looked like a normal phone on the outside – but pay attention 007, when you open up this phone like this…  The original Communicator was magnificent most of all because of its QWERTY keyboard – I was already addicted to SMS at the time over a decade ago. And the N93 – that was the ‘contortionist’ form factor, flip phone one way, video camera shooting phone another way and palmtop form factor the third way. I loved its optical zoom (I used to be an amateur photographer when young, so all this digital zoom nonsense annoys me, but real optical zoom, that was awesome on a phone back in 2006). And it also had very powerful video graphics acceleration for excellent video playback; obviously it shot VGA ‘near DVD’ quality video, so what a super super phone. Such a shame that Nokia has discontinued that form factor.

• Why would you consider yourself mobsessed?

Ah yes, I am most certainly mobsessed. I am soooo mobsessed that I find reason to send an SMS text message from one of my phones to another of my phones – while carrying both – at least once per day! Mobsessed? I think I’m mobideranged

The brilliant and also entertaining Tomi Ahonen ladies and gentlemen. You can get his very latest Almanac here with every stat you will need to formulate your mobile strategy in 2010 – I highly recommend it.