3's Content Not Making Users Content

Martin Little has a great writeup at Mobitopia comparing the content he can get with his 3 phone with what he can get via GPRS using Orange. If it's any indication of what's available, it should be absolutely no surprise that 3 wasn't gaining much traction by trying to sell their 3G service based on what it let you do with content. Most of the basic applications (news, weather, sports, stocks) aren't necessarily enhanced by high bandwidth applications like video. In fact, it seems you can do much better with a simple WAP solution. The one advantage 3 has is that it can do video phone calls... except that so few people have 3 phones that there's no one to video call. Suggests another reason why Hutchison made some hasty decisions in launching 3 without necessarily thinking through what consumers might actually want.