As the world welcomes the new Apple 3G iphone and the existing phone makers (HTC, Samsung, RIM, Nokia) rush to develop the iphone killer it strikes us that maybe there is a big opportunity that’s gone missing.

The current trend is for phone designers to pack more and more into their mobile phones as they follow the technology genie to smaller, lighter, more powerful handsets. What remains to be seen of course is whether or not people actually want all of this new functionality.

I remember speaking with a contact from Microsoft sometime ago who commented on the fact that people only used a very small proportion of the Office functionality that had been built in. I suspect the same is true for mobile phones.

Adding weight to this opportunity was an unmet need we uncovered when working on a travel and tourism project. People want to be able to perform the ‘job’ of staying in contact with loved ones while travelling. However, they feel they are poorly served with the current set of available solutions.

Let’s look at this: The existing solution set consists of phone cards that allow you to use a land line anywhere - the problem being having access to a land line. The other option is to take your existing mobile phone with you. There are a couple of obvious constraints to this. Firstly, you need to be able to access another network which can be both expensive and troublesome. Secondly, that wonderful handset you bought runs the risk of being damaged, lost or even stolen on your travels.

So what sort of solution could you develop? Even more importantly, what sort of disruption to both the phone card, land line and mobile phone market could you develop?

Well a thorough understanding of the Job the traveller is trying to get done may well result in you developing a solution like the Hop1800.

This really is classic Disruptive innovation. Doing the essential job the traveller is trying to get done in a good enough fashion. Nice. A handset that is a phone. That’s all. No screen, no phone book, no texting ability, no camera. Just a good old fashioned phone. However, the killer blow is the price. 10 pounds ($A28).

Michael R Johnson