Opinion: What's next for Asia's mobile industry?

Serve the customer
Equally noteworthy is how the introduction of flat-rate data plans significantly boosted the Japanese market, which is being echoed here in the UK with tariffs such as Web'n'Walk -- but there's still work to do. Better roaming agreements are key to pushing data-dependant services and that's important because it's apps and services that are going to promote growth in Asia and everywhere else.

Take mobile TV, for example: as a one-way broadcasting system it doesn't offer a very compelling business model, but add a viewer's location and viewing habits into the mix and every advertiser will be clamouring to buy mobile TV ad space.

What can we learn from South Korea and Japan? If consumers, manufacturers and networks are truly going to reap the rewards of new technology, the answer isn't to flood the market with hundreds of new devices -- the answer it seems lies in simplifying the entire process, from the top.

For starters, you need cutting-edge technology, but you have to make it easy to use and simple to add or remove services. Whether it's a smart phone or music phone, allow for openness, so that users can customise it to work as they want it to. Finally, don't overcharge for Internet access or roaming, because that's what's going to push things forward.

It's no good relying on European or US operators to decide what consumers are going to find meaningful. LG and Samsung have to take a leaf out of Apple and Nokia's book and take more calculated risks, even at the cost of annoying the networks. Indeed, the only reason the iPhone ever had a chance was because the market got complacent, churning out boring products. LG and Samsung are in danger of falling into that hole, which is why they should jump on the open-platform bandwagon as soon as possible. -Andrew Lim

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