It's the keyboard stupid

I used to work for an embedded operating system company who's marketing slogan was briefly "It's the tools stupid", meaning it wasn't the core product that was holding up the sales, it was the tools to use the product that were the problem. The exact same thing applies to mobile applications on phones and mobile data networks. Tiny Keyboards Biggest Obstacle for Handheld Users spells out the obvious - the tiny keyboard with non-intuitive data entry is the biggest hurdle to mobile data access. Just think about it, most people have enough problems with a regular keyboard, only the youngest users are able "text" on a numeric keypad with their eyes closed.

I find it funny that it takes a study to reveal this information - its been obvious to me since I started trying to build mobile apps for devices back in 1999. Is it any wonder that even today the mobile voice market is $98 billion a year, but the mobile data market is a paultry $4 billion?