6 Mobile things observed while on my European Adventure

Over the last 2 weeks I had the opportunity to travel to Europe for a ski and adventure trip to Zermatt, Zurich, Paris, and London.  It was my first time back in Europe for pleasure in a few years and it gave me an opportunity to observe & immerse myself in European mobile culture.

Here are some highlights of what I learned:

1. SMS is ubiquitous. We took a bus from Luton Airport to Heathrow (coming from Paris to London to home) and the Coach bus we took had cling-on signs on many of the windows encouraging passengers to text their feedback on the driver, comfort or experience to a shortcode. Who needs to write a letter, send a fax or call an automated IVR system when you can simply text instantly?
2. Even Grandma is mobile.  Standing on a train I watched as an older and white haired women gleefully shared an MMS picture of her grandson and his dog to her friends that she had just received
3. Many phones but not necessarily smart phones.  I saw very few blackberrys, iphones, or other smartphones. People we interacted with mostly carried Nokia, LG  or Samsung phones
4. Wifi is everywhere but not very reliable. Having turned off my data roaming ability on my iphone in order to keep my phone bill under $1,000, i was constantly searching or checking for wifi.  Many cafes had wifi – but it either wasn’t working or you had to go through a 7 step process to get access. I tried to pay a few times on some of the city services, but the sites weren’t optimized for mobile and only in French… which made it difficult to figure out what to do.
5. Roaming rates are killer. If you go to Europe, make sure your mobile device is unlocked so that you can buy a local SIM card for data so that you can cost effectively use your GPS, check email, or look for things to do.
6. 2d codes are not yet ubiquitous. The Metro paper in Paris didn’t have any 2d bar codes, but interestingly enough many of the free tourist guides came with QR Codes. The call to action sent consumers to 2dscan.com – the same site the National Post uses to auto-download 2d bar code readers for their paper. It’s also the same one I’ve used recently for our SKI PRO Ontario magazine.

Like in Canada, it’s expected that the iphone will be offered from multiple carriers all over Europe over the next 6 months.

In combination with the next generation android-based devices about to hit the market, I’m sure my next visit will yield very different observations about how mobile fits into the European culture.