We spend most of our day scouting for new products and services to load on our mobile phones. We have seen a lot of good applications and plenty of great products but, sometimes, it does not seem to be enough.

I landed at London Heathrow and was standing by the conveyor waiting for my bag to arrive.

Two people, in their 60 from what I could see, were near me waiting for their luggage too. The man had an old (well, old for our standards) Nokia 3210 in his right hand and a slip of paper in his left hand. While reading phone numbers on the slip of paper he was typing it on the mobile phone. Having done this he started his conversation with the other party.

He was not using the mobile phone contacts application and he was not using the recent calls feature of his handset. I actually looked after how many numbers were written on the paper slip and they were no more that three or four. Moreover the paper slip looked quite old and used and this indicates that what he was doing was his usual behavior.

I realized that it does not matter how hard with push with new applications and services. A slice of our customers will not even use them and will stick with the basic feature the mobile phone was designed for: talking.

As simple as that.

The most important lesson was that the guy was happy with his phone and with his experience. When the phone call finished he wrapped the slip of paper and carefully put it in his wallet.

Why do I blog this? Sometimes we spend too much time thinking at new stuff and we forget that we should make existing stuff easier.