One of the most familiar technologies we use today may be on the verge of being replaced. The twelve-button design common on most mobile phones the world over and the standard for over 50 years, may finally disappear as new technologies like 3G require easier data usage from our handsets.

Or so says David Levy, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Digit Wireless, creators and patent holder for the new "Fastap" keypad. He believes that in the light of 3G advances and ever-greater access to data-sending technology, the time is right for a new design for our outmoded keypad. "It's one of the oldest pieces of technology that we still use," explains Levy. "We don't consider how it has aged because it is so pervasive. But from a technology standpoint the inside of the phone has advanced tremendously and the outside of the phone, the interface, has not."

Levy draws an analogy with the computer industry. With its vastly improved capacity and a high performance processor, computers were hindered by the old DOS (Disc Operating System) interface - a hangover from another era that was not replaced until the mouse and the graphic user interface made its entry. "You can see it as a enormous bottleneck. You have an amazing technology behind a wall, that wall being a very, very old interface," he adds.

Messaging-friendly

The design itself, based on the old twelve-pad keypad but with letters on their own buttons interspaced between the number keys ("a traditional keypad on steroids"), is both faster to use and easier to understand for consumers, says Levy. Furthermore, if the current standard twelve-button keypad were to be launched on the market today it would be rejected, he says. "If you told people that you had to press this one key over and over again just to get the letter 'b', people would reject that idea completely. It's just a bad interface."

Levy should know a thing or two about ergonomics and user-friendliness within the electronics sector. It was when he was head of Portable Device Ergonomics at Apple Computer for five years that Apple introduced its first laptop with the keyboard "moved to the rear" and the first with a touch pad - both having since become industry standards for portable computers. "The whole focus of this technology is to be 'Apple-like'," Levy goes on to say. "It has to be extremely simple so that any individual is able to pick it up and use it and I believe it meets that criteria. There are a lot of different approaches that significantly change the design of the phone or change the way you input text. But this is an amplification of what we already have. That simple change seems to be dramatically increasing the data usage and messaging usage of people who would otherwise not do it."

The incentive is also there for carriers as data input on a Fastap keypad is "at least twice as fast as 'triple-tapping' or predictive software", thereby encouraging data sending. "Fastap doubles messaging and data usage," says Levy. His information comes from Telus Mobility; exclusive suppliers of the Fastap LG 6190 phone which uses the new keypad in Canada and who introduced the phone in that market last December. Telus Mobility's analysis shows that text messaging increased by 120 per cent for new purchasers of the new phone. This is after all the normal increase typical for owners of new mobile phones has been factored in, he adds.

Several improvements are in the pipeline. For the super-speedy SMS users predictive software is currently in the process of being added. Other patents have been filed, including some innovations unrelated to Fastap, but about which Levy is unable to give details at present. He does however point to the wireless industry as of particular interest given its unique dynamics. "It's not like selling a PC or VCR - once you've sold the product you're done. The wireless industry is amazing because there's an on-going monthly revenue stream which is generated, and the size of that revenue stream is going to be largely dictated by how easy it is to use."

Slow acceptance

It has not been easy though. Despite appearances to the contrary, speed of acceptance of innovations in the mobile technology sector can be pedestrian, especially when persuading a manufacturer to buy into a new technology that is not an in-house product. Moreover, once one company has launched it, others adopt a wait and see posture. "There's a lot of talk that people want to innovate but my experience is that this is not really the case. The truth is that there is a lot of money to be had doing the same old stuff. And because there's so much demand, there almost an 'anti-incentive' to innovate," says Levy.

Nevertheless, success in Canada with Telus Mobility - it was the best selling phone for six months after its introduction other than those given away, says Levy - has given the company cause for optimism. A confessed history of technology buff, Levy likes to draw on examples of how technology has been taken up in the past: sometimes greeted with suspicion by experts but welcomed elsewhere. "In 1984 when the Macintosh came out, computer experts wrote it off. Our early adopters are going to be the same people who went for the Mac. It's going to be the people who were not really that interested previously. What happened with the Mac was that the experts started to be surpassed by the amateurs. We think this will be the same path for Fastap," he says.

Within the laptop market the development from mice to trackballs to touch pads went from 0 to 80 per cent in about seven years. Levy feels that 5 per cent market penetration and three phone models launched would give the company the momentum required to propel it on to the 50 to 80 per cent market share within the next five years or so that he predicts. And once that 5 per cent worldwide has been reached, then other small products with keypads such as TV remote controls, MP3 downloaders and smart card readers could be new markets.

Elsewhere, Digit Wireless hopes that the Fastap keypad may kick-start a new wave of phone buying for manufacturers. Certain key developments are important enough to persuade people to trade in their perfectly functional phone for a new model. The introduction of colour screens and cameras have been two recent examples. "Phone sales tend to go in waves. People will be content with their current phone then something will occur like a camera, or colour screens. That will be enough of a reason for someone to say I guess it's time for me to get a new phone," says Levy.

In the meantime, Digit Wireless, created in the mould of patent-based Dolby Laboratories but with an ergonomics focus rather than an acoustic one, will be presenting its products in Hong Kong at November's 3G World Congress and Exhibition where Levy hopes to attract more interest. Using the twelve-button keypad is akin to starting a modern computer operated car with a crank, he says. "No one would question getting out and turning the crank on their car if there wasn't such a thing as a battery!"

(HK Edition 09/21/2005 page4)