Smart phone big boys on the hunt for killer app

With the number of smart phones growing at a rate of knots, and a raft of new features joining the likes of push email daily, the mobile industry is searching for the next killer app.

Old favourites like mobile TV are still on the agenda, with SonyEricsson now looking at how to follow in the footsteps of Nokia into mobile TV. Rikko Sakaguchi, senior VP of products and applications at SonyEricsson, said: "It's a high priority. There are different ways to do it - streaming, DVB-H... We're working on it."

Orange, the firm which launched the first mobile TV service in the UK, is now turning its attention in other directions.

Steve Glagow, director of the Orange partner programme, said: "With smart phones, there has to be a compelling reason to pick it up - not just the 'cool' factor."

One such reason, according to Glagow, is the need for speed. "With broadband in the home and Wi-Fi available... there are higher speeds and people are expecting that on their handsets," he said. "When people are travelling, they stay at a hotel and they don't have access to broadband, their handsets are where they're looking."

In the gadget lovers' paradise of Japan, consumers need more than 3G or HSDPA to be impressed these days.

Dr Kiyohito Nagata, VP and MD in the product department of Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo, said the company is throwing its weight even further behind FeliCa, the technology for mobile contactless payments. It's even looking to have "full credit service" on handsets and fingerprint readers to stop the devices being misused.

Others, however, are looking at novel solutions to the killer app question. IBM software group's executive director of embedded development, Michael Karasick, revealed the company has already been involved in developing a one-button phone, as well as phones that connect to local buses' GPS to report when the next bus will arrive, or to washing machines to show students when their laundry is done.

Karasick said: "We got a lot of interest in that one - it surprised the hell out of me. We got more interest in that than deploying a multimillion dollar mainframe."

Orange's Glagow, however, said the industry is still no nearer to finding the solution to its killer app problem.

He said: "Is [mobile TV] a killer app? No one knows. It's generating a lot of interest but I believe we're still looking for the killer app."